Time Human

Leonardo da Vinci Pictures

2012-01-20T17:36:00.000-06:00

Here are some pictures of Leonardo da Vinci:

Leonardo's study of the womb

His first known sketch

Leo's helicopter sketch

The Mona Lisa

The Jet Engine VW Beetle

2012-01-19T13:59:00.001-06:00

What do you get when you combine a jet engine with a VW Beetle? Well, you get what Mr. Ron Patrick created -- this awesome baby!

Now aside from this being to coolest Beetle you will ever see in your life, why would you want to put money into something like this if you couldn't even ride it on the street. Hehe, I got some good news for you! It's completely street legal. The only problem is you can't engage the supersonic jet engine on the road. How sad. You're more than welcome to use it's original gasoline engine though!

Mr. Ron Patrick - creator of the jet engine beetle, has his PHD in mechanical engineering from Standford university. That means he knows what the hell he's doing.

Blast off!

How fast does this car go?
The jet engine boasts about 1350 horsepower. However, Ron doesn't really know exactly how fast it can make the car go. This is what he said:

"I don't know how fast the car will go and probably never will. The car was built to thrill me, not kill me. That doesn't stop me from the occasional blast on the highway though."

Ron Patrick used a General Electric Model T58-8F, which is a helicopter turboshaft engine that he modified into a jet engine.

Anyone up for a barbecue?

The most recent funny news about this car (actually several years ago but he doesn't update his site) is that his local DMV made a request to the some federal agency that his Beetle might be a threat to national security. They raise the question of what might happen if the thing gets into the wrong hands. This is how Ron responded:

"If someone with the name "b_laden13" is the highest eBay bidder for my Beetle can I refuse his offer even if he has the prestigious eBay Red Shooting Star feedback rating (the highest)?"

Want More?
Find more photographs and information on this Jet engine powered Bettle at ronpatrickstuff.com

Anyone wanna go for a ride?

Benjamin Franklin Pictures

2012-01-19T13:49:00.001-06:00

Pictures of the famous inventor Benjamin Franklin:

Franklin's birthplace

First postage stamp

Pictures of other scientists:
Albert Einstein
Charles Darwin
Leonardo da Vinci
Nikola Tesla
Edwin Hubble

Nikola Tesla Quotes

2012-01-16T23:27:00.000-06:00

Great quotes by the mad scientist Nikola Tesla:

If Edison had a needle to find in a haystack, he would proceed at once with the diligence of the bee to examine straw after straw until he found the object of his search. I was a sorry witness of such doings, knowing that a little theory and calculation would have saved him ninety per cent of his labor. -- Nikola Tesla

I do not think there is any thrill that can go through the human heart like that felt by the inventor as he sees some creation of the brain unfolding to success... such emotions make a man forget food, sleep, friends, love, everything. -- Nikola Tesla

My method is different. I do not rush into actual work. When I get a new idea, I start at once building it up in my imagination, and make improvements and operate the device in my mind. When I have gone so far as to embody everything in my invention, every possible improvement I can think of, and when I see no fault anywhere, I put into concrete form the final product of my brain. -- Nikola Tesla

Let the future tell the truth, and evaluate each one according to his work and accomplishments. The present is theirs; the future, for which I have really worked, is mine. -- Nikola Tesla

Our virtues and our failings are inseparable, like force and matter. When they separate, man is no more. -- Nikola Tesla

The gift of mental power comes from God, Divine Being, and if we concentrate our minds on that truth, we become in tune with this great power. -- Nikola Tesla

The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite insane. -- Nikola Tesla

The spread of civilization may be likened to a fire; first, a feeble spark, next a flickering flame, then a mighty blaze, ever increasing in speed and power. -- Nikola Tesla

Today's scientists have substituted mathematics for experiments, and they wander off through equation after equation, and eventually build a structure which has no relation to reality. -- Nikola Tesla

A Tesla coil

Albert Einstein Quotes

2012-01-16T17:32:00.001-06:00

Here is a comprehensive list of Albert Einstein quotes:

We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles, but no personality. -- Albert Einstein

Yes, we have to divide up our time like that, between our politics and our equations. But to me our equations are far more important, for politics are only a matter of present concern. A mathematical equation stands forever. -- Albert Einstein

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Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius -- and a lot of courage -- to move in the opposite direction. -- Albert Einstein

As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality. -- Albert Einstein

A person starts to live when he can live outside himself. -- Albert Einstein

Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind. -- Albert Einstein

Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom. -- Albert Einstein

It is the duty of every citizen according to his best capacities to give validity to his convictions in political affairs. -- Albert Einstein

Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen. -- Albert Einstein

Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not one bit simpler. -- Albert Einstein

If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts. -- Albert Einstein

Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new. -- Albert Einstein

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. -- Albert Einstein

Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted. -- Albert Einstein

Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the Gods. -- Albert Einstein

The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education. -- Albert Einstein

You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war. -- Albert Einstein

At any rate, I am convinced that He (God) does not play dice. -- Albert Einstein

If someone can enjoy marching to music in rank and file, I can feel only contempt for him; he has received his large brain by mistake, a spinal cord would have been enough. -- Albert Einstein

Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices, but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence and fulfills the duty to express the results of his thought in clear form. -- Albert Einstein

The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe. -- Albert Einstein

When you look at yourself from a universal standpoint, something inside always reminds or informs you that there are bigger and better things to worry about. -- Albert Einstein

Before God we are all equally wise - and equally foolish. -- Albert Einstein

Do not worry about your difficulties in Mathematics. I can assure you mine are still greater. -- Albert Einstein

Ethical axioms are found and tested not very differently from the axioms of science. Truth is what stands the test of experience. -- Albert Einstein

Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything he learned in school. -- Albert Einstein

Every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving. -- Albert Einstein

Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions. -- Albert Einstein

My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind. -- Albert Einstein

Gravitation cannot be held responsible for people falling in love. How on earth can you explain in terms of chemistry and physics so important a biological phenomenon as first love? Put your hand on a stove for a minute and it seems like an hour. Sit with that special girl for an hour and it seems like a minute. That's relativity. -- Albert Einstein

No, this trick won't work...How on earth are you ever going to explain in terms of chemistry and physics so important a biological phenomenon as first love? -- Albert Einstein

I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones. -- Albert Einstein

I never teach my pupils. I only attempt to provide the conditions in which they can learn. -- Albert Einstein

I never think of the future - it comes soon enough. -- Albert Einstein

If I had only known, I would have been a locksmith. -- Albert Einstein

If you are out to describe the truth, leave elegance to the tailor. -- Albert Einstein

Imagination is more important than knowledge. -- Albert Einstein

It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. -- Albert Einstein

Laws alone can not secure freedom of expression; in order that every man present his views without penalty there must be spirit of tolerance in the entire population. -- Albert Einstein

My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind. -- Albert Einstein

Nothing will benefit human health and increase the chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet. -- Albert Einstein

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. -- Albert Einstein

Reading, after a certain age, diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking. -- Albert Einstein

The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity. -- Albert Einstein

The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. -- Albert Einstein

The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is at all comprehensible. -- Albert Einstein

The release of atomic energy has not created a new problem. It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an existing one. -- Albert Einstein

The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources. -- Albert Einstein

Try not to become a man of success but rather to become a man of value. -- Albert Einstein

Paleo CSI Shows Earliest Murder Weapon in History

2011-10-30T00:09:00.001-05:00

Believe it or not, archaeologists and paleontologists have uncovered the earliest 'murder weapon': a 13.800 years old sharp piece of bone, which researchers believe was used as a spear.

The piece of bone, found in a mastodon rib found in 1970 has stirred controversy ever since it was unearthed. While some believe this hypothesis, some scientists are skeptic that the alleged weapon was actually shaped by humans.

"We're fortunate that the hunter 13,800 years ago was probably trying to get that bone projectile point in between the ribs, probably trying to get at a vital organ," said study researcher Michael Waters, an anthropologist at the Center for the Study of the First Americans at Texas A&M University. "Maybe the mastodon flinched or his thrust was off, and he hit a rib instead and broke his bone projectile point. So it's bad for him, and good for us."

However, oddly enough, when classic methods of investigation fail, forensic sciences come and save the day. Using techniques also common in forensic anthropology, they were able to find not only that humans killed the mastodon, but also how they did it. It wasn't a fair fight – the animal was old and probably sick when it died. Odontologists revealed that the teeth were "quite literally worn down to a nubbin".

In order to test their theories, paleontologists used high-resolution computed tomography (CT) scan. "This is a high-resolution industrial version that creates digital X-rays spaced every 0.06 millimeters [0.002 inches], about half the thickness of a piece of paper."

To top it off, researchers even made some DNA sampling on the bone marrow of the mastodon – to check if the weaponry was made from the same one, or from a different one.

"That was even more exciting, because what that meant is whoever these hunters were that tracked down and killed the Manis Mastodon were hunting with weapons made from a previous kill," Waters said.

Andrei Mihai
ZME Science
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Where is Albert Einstein's Brain?

2011-09-03T21:12:00.003-05:00

Where in the world is Einstein's brain? Where has it gone?

When his body passed away, Albert Einstein's brain was surgically removed 7 hours later. It was taken by Thomas Stoltz Harvey, who was the guy that did the autopsy on Albert. Whether he took the brain with permission is still unkown.

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In a 1971 biography by Ronald Clark, Einstein said he wanted his brain to be used for research and his body cremated. However, according to Einstein's relatives, that wasn't necessarily true at all and Harvey did indeed take the brain without permission.

Einstein's son, Hans Einstein, did agree to the removal of the brain, but
only for research that would be included in the best scientific
journals.

Mr. Harvey was hoping to study Einstein's brain--to see why he was such a genius. He took pictures of the brain and then dissected it into 240 blocks, which he put into jars. Because of Mr. Harvey's lack of expertise, he never found anything significant.

Harvey didn't only remove Einstein's brain. He took his eyes out and gave them to a dude named Henry Abrams who was Einstein's eye doctor.

A few months later, Mr. Harvey was fired from Princeton Hospital. The reason for his firing was due to the fact that he wouldn't share the brain. Mr. Harvey kept it and took it with him. It was his own personal pet. Slowly, over time, he let bits and pieces be taken by researchers. It wasn't until 1996 when Harvey brought what was left of the brain to Dr. Elliot Krauss at Princeton Hospital, where it remains today.

Raw Video Footage of Albert Einstein Arriving in America

2011-06-07T20:46:00.000-05:00

Here is a video of the coolest man to ever live, Albert Einstein. The video is very short and has no sounds, but, any video with Albert Einstein in it is a cool video indeed!

Summer Science Reads For 2011

2011-06-06T18:32:00.000-05:00

Here are some great science books to get you through the summer. I've already read all of these. Try to catch up! :)

Note: all links go to amazon.com and if you buy something I get a small commission. The commission does not affect the price in any way.

Physics of the Future: How Science Will Shape Human Destiny and Our Daily Lives by the Year 2100

On the origin of species by means of natural selection,: Or, The preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life

The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values

Beyond Boundaries: The New Neuroscience of Connecting Brains with Machines---and How It Will Change Our Lives

Space: From Earth to the Edge of the Universe

God Created the Integers: The Mathematical Breakthroughs that Changed History

The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos

The Elegant Universe: Superstrings, Hidden Dimensions, and the Quest for the Ultimate Theory

The Universe in a Nutshell

Transcend: Nine Steps to Living Well Forever

Anyone have suggestions for other science books?

Must Reads On Time Human

2011-06-04T14:45:00.001-05:00

*Not in any chronological order

Check all of these out and share them with your friends!

Michio Kaku Takes Us On A Journey Through His Office

2011-06-03T21:25:00.001-05:00

Astrophysics, Michi Kaku, author of Physics of the Impossible, Physics of the Future, and other fascinating titles, takes us on a journey through his personal office space. I don't believe I have ever seen such an office space in perfect mathematical order! Just watch the video and you will see what I mean.

You Should See These:
Make Your Own Star Trek Style Door
Ghostbusters Trailer Gets Inceptionized
The Coolest Homemade Lightsaber
China's Futuristic Winter Wonderland

Super 8 Sounds Like a Super Date

2011-06-01T01:21:00.000-05:00

Super 8 sounds like a super date! I have no clue as to what it's about, but it looks really awesome. I'm thinking it may be an Alien type of movie. After seeing Battle LA and Paul, hopefully this will be worth my money.

Here is the trailer if you haven't seen it yet.

Becoming Superman Is Possible With Microsoft Kinect

2011-02-12T12:35:00.000-06:00

Want to be Superman? No problem!

Students from the University of Amsterdam are working on a hack/mod for Microsoft's Kinect that brings back the childhood dream of becoming the Man of Steel.

siccovansas

2-Timing Spacecraft Has Date With Another Comet

2011-02-12T12:29:00.000-06:00

NASA's Stardust spacecraft, equipped with the University of Chicago's Dust Flux Monitor Instrument (DFMI), is hurtling at more than 24,000 miles an hour toward a Valentine's Day encounter with comet Tempel 1.

Stardust will approach to within 124 miles of Tempel 1 at 10:56 p.m. CST Monday, Feb. 14. The spacecraft flew within 150 miles of comet Wild 2 in 2004, when it collected thousands of tiny dust particles streaming from the comet's nucleus for laboratory analysis.

The spacecraft dropped off the samples in a canister that parachuted onto the desert salt flats of Utah in January 2006 following a journey of nearly approximately 3.5 billion miles. But Stardust, still healthy and with fuel to spare, soon went back onto the interplanetary market, looking for a second mission.
The mission will be the first to allow Thanasas Economou, Senior Scientist at UChicago's Enrico Fermi Institute, and his fellow members of the Stardust-NExT (New Exploration of Tempel) science team to look for changes on a comet's surface that occurred following an orbit around the sun. They will compare Stardust's data from Tempel 1 with findings from a previous probe that also studied that comet.

"We are very excited that we can visit a second comet—comet Tempel 1—with the same spacecraft after we visited the Wild 2 comet in 2004," Economou said. "The Dust Flux Monitor Instrument is healthy and ready to take another look at this comet."

Stardust had only one sample-return canister, so this time the spacecraft will be unable to capture cometary dust for analysis back on Earth. Few at the time thought that the spacecraft would be able to visit another comet, "but even so, we are looking forward to seeing what kind of results we will get," Economou said.

They also are interested in obtaining photographs of the crater left on Tempe 1 by a probe launched from the Deep Impact spacecraft in July 2005. The 817-pound copper-aluminum probe generated so much dust that the spacecraft was unable to obtain images of the crater following impact. Such images would permit scientists to estimate the new crater's depth and diameter.

The impact enabled scientists to study the composition of Tempel 1, a Jupiter-class comet whose orbit has been modified by close passages to the planet. Stardust now has the opportunity to collect additional data on how Jupiter-family comets formed and evolved.

The DFMI was developed by Economou and the late John Simpson, the Arthur Holly Compton Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus in Physics, and the late Anthony Tuzzolino, Senior Scientist in UChicago's Fermi Institute.

The instrument detected as many as several hundred particles each second during Stardust's flyby of comet Wild 2 in January 2004. Most of those particles measured no more than a few microns in diameter, too small to see with the naked eye. Just a few measured more than 10 microns, about one-fifth the diameter of a human hair.

Tempel 1 has displayed less surface activity than did Wild 2, "but we are going there with a higher velocity, so probably the flux will be equal to or a little more than we had during the Wild 2 encounter," Economou said.

The Tempel 1 flyby likely will be the last assignment for Stardust, which is running low on fuel after logging almost 3.7 billion miles in space since its launch in 1999. Economou, meanwhile, will continue his collaborations on NASA's Mars Exploration Rover mission and the Cassini mission to Saturn. He also is working to establish a new astronomical observatory near his childhood home in Ziakas, Greece.

University of Chicago

Save That Water, Use This Bong-Style Faucet

2011-02-06T18:40:00.000-06:00

This bong-style faucet was designed by Yonggu Do, Dohyung Kim & Sewon Oh, which was feature on yankodesign.com. The Faucet is touted to save water by forcing the user to wait for the one-liter reservoir to fill back up after use.

Via Gizmodo

Quadriplegic Sets Guinness World Record For Fastest Hands-Free Typing [Video]

2011-02-06T18:28:00.000-06:00

Hank Torres, a quadriplegic, set the Guinness Book of World Records for the fastest hands-free typing.

Via Gizmodo

Fluorescent Peptides Help Nerves Glow In Surgery

2011-02-06T18:16:00.000-06:00

Accidental damage to thin or buried nerves during surgery can have severe consequences, from chronic pain to permanent paralysis. Scientists at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine may have found a remedy: injectable fluorescent peptides that cause hard-to-see peripheral nerves to glow, alerting surgeons to their location even before the nerves are encountered. Read more -- Fluorescent peptides help nerves glow in surgery

Engineers Grow Nanolasers On Silicon, Pave Way For On-Chip Photonics

2011-02-06T18:13:00.000-06:00

Berkeley – Engineers at the University of California, Berkeley, have found a way to grow nanolasers directly onto a silicon surface, an achievement that could lead to a new class of faster, more efficient microprocessors, as well as to powerful biochemical sensors that use optoelectronic chips.

They describe their work in a paper to be published Feb. 6 in an advanced online issue of the journal Nature Photonics.

"Our results impact a broad spectrum of scientific fields, including materials science, transistor technology, laser science, optoelectronics and optical physics," said the study's principal investigator, Connie Chang-Hasnain, UC Berkeley professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences.

The increasing performance demands of electronics have sent researchers in search of better ways to harness the inherent ability of light particles to carry far more data than electrical signals can. Optical interconnects are seen as a solution to overcoming the communications bottleneck within and between computer chips.

Because silicon, the material that forms the foundation of modern electronics, is extremely deficient at generating light, engineers have turned to another class of materials known as III-V (pronounced "three-five") semiconductors to create light-based components such as light-emitting diodes (LEDs) and lasers.

But the researchers pointed out that marrying III-V with silicon to create a single optoelectronic chip has been problematic. For one, the atomic structures of the two materials are mismatched.

"Growing III-V semiconductor films on silicon is like forcing two incongruent puzzle pieces together," said study lead author Roger Chen, a UC Berkeley graduate student in electrical engineering and computer sciences. "It can be done, but the material gets damaged in the process."

Moreover, the manufacturing industry is set up for the production of silicon-based materials, so for practical reasons, the goal has been to integrate the fabrication of III-V devices into the existing infrastructure, the researchers said.

"Today's massive silicon electronics infrastructure is extremely difficult to change for both economic and technological reasons, so compatibility with silicon fabrication is critical," said Chang-Hasnain. "One problem is that growth of III-V semiconductors has traditionally involved high temperatures – 700 degrees Celsius or more – that would destroy the electronics. Meanwhile, other integration approaches have not been scalable."

The UC Berkeley researchers overcame this limitation by finding a way to grow nanopillars made of indium gallium arsenide, a III-V material, onto a silicon surface at the relatively cool temperature of 400 degrees Celsius.

"Working at nanoscale levels has enabled us to grow high quality III-V materials at low temperatures such that silicon electronics can retain their functionality," said Chen.

The researchers used metal-organic chemical vapor deposition to grow the nanopillars on the silicon. "This technique is potentially mass manufacturable, since such a system is already used commercially to make thin film solar cells and light emitting diodes," said Chang-Hasnain.

Once the nanopillar was made, the researchers showed that it could generate near infrared laser light – a wavelength of about 950 nanometers – at room temperature. The hexagonal geometry dictated by the crystal structure of the nanopillars creates a new, efficient, light-trapping optical cavity. Light circulates up and down the structure in a helical fashion and amplifies via this optical feedback mechanism.

The unique approach of growing nanolasers directly onto silicon could lead to highly efficient silicon photonics, the researchers said. They noted that the miniscule dimensions of the nanopillars – smaller than one wavelength on each side, in some cases – make it possible to pack them into small spaces with the added benefit of consuming very little energy

"Ultimately, this technique may provide a powerful and new avenue for engineering on-chip nanophotonic devices such as lasers, photodetectors, modulators and solar cells," said Chen.

"This is the first bottom-up integration of III-V nanolasers onto silicon chips using a growth process compatible with the CMOS (complementary metal oxide semiconductor) technology now used to make integrated circuits," said Chang-Hasnain. "This research has the potential to catalyze an optoelectronics revolution in computing, communications, displays and optical signal processing. In the future, we expect to improve the characteristics of these lasers and ultimately control them electronically for a powerful marriage between photonic and electronic devices."

Source: Reprinted news release via University of California - Berkeley

Researchers Work To Develop A Vehicle That Can Be Driven By The Blind

2011-02-05T21:28:00.000-06:00

Last Saturday, a blind driver dodged cardboard boxes thrown in front of him while driving a modified Ford Hybrid Escape around the Daytona International Speedway. He had only seconds to react to the obstacles.

"If we just put boxes on the track, people might think we planned the route," said Dennis Hong, whose robotics and mechanisms lab at Virginia Tech modified the cars.

Instead, Hong's team threw boxes from a van so they bounced around. “That shows everyone that their position is random, and that the drivers are really driving,” said Hong.

In addition to avoiding boxes and taking the raceway's turns, the driver, Mark Riccobono, also passed the van.

Fortunately, Riccobono and a second blind driver, Anil Lewis, had done it before. Read more - Researchers work to develop a vehicle that can be driven by the blind

Researchers Capture Jumping Genes

2011-02-05T21:26:00.000-06:00

An ambitious hunt by Johns Hopkins scientists for actively "jumping genes" in humans has yielded compelling new evidence that the genome, anything but static, contains numerous pesky mobile elements that may help to explain why people have such a variety of physical traits and disease risks. Read more --Researchers capture jumping genes

Bioengineered Veins Offer New Hope On Horizon For Patients Lacking Healthy Veins For Coronary Bypass Surgery Or Dialysis

2011-02-05T21:22:00.000-06:00

The day when a surgeon can pull a new human vein “off the shelf” for use in life-saving vascular surgeries is now one step closer to reality. New research published in the current issue of the journal, Science Translational Medicine, demonstrates the efficacy of tissue-engineered vascular grafts (TEVGs) that are immediately-available at the time of surgery and have decreased potential for infection, obstruction or clotting. The bioengineering method of producing veins reported in the newly-published research shows promise in both large and small diameter applications, such as for Coronary Artery Bypass Graft (CABG) surgery and for vascular access in hemodialysis.
Coronary Artery Bypass Graft (CABG) Surgery

The American Heart Association Update on Heart Disease Statistics reports that in 2007, in the U.S., just over 400,000 coronary bypass procedures were performed. Patients requiring bypass surgery may not have suitable veins or arteries available and are not candidates for synthetic grafts because of the size needed for grafting.

“This new type of bioengineered vein allows them to be easily stored in hospitals so they are readily available to surgeons at the time of need,” said Alan P. Kypson, M.D., Associate Professor of Cardiothoracic Surgery, Brody School of Medicine, at East Carolina University, also an author of the paper. ”Currently, grafting using the patient’s own veins remains the gold standard. But, harvesting a vein from the patient’s leg can lead to complications, and for patients who don’t have suitable veins, the bioengineered veins could serve as an important new way to provide a coronary bypass.”

Kidney Hemodialysis

According to statistics published by the National Kidney Foundation, 320,000 patients are on chronic hemodialysis. Each year, 110,000 new patients develop renal failure requiring dialysis, and the number is growing by three percent per year. More than half of dialysis patients lack the healthy veins necessary and must undergo an arteriovenous graft (AV graft) placement in order to have bloodstream access for hemodialysis.

“Most AV grafts that are placed for hemodialysis access are comprised of a synthetic material, which suffers from significant drawbacks including a high rate of infection, or a propensity for occlusion due to thrombosis and intimal hyperplasia,” said Jeffrey H. Lawson, M.D., Ph.D., Associate Professor of Surgery at Duke University School of Medicine and an author of the research. “Due to high complication rates, each AV dialysis graft requires an average of 2.8 interventions over its lifetime just to keep it functioning. Hence, there is a huge clinical need for a functionally superior, off-the-shelf, AV graft that suffers from fewer complications than current materials.”

The research was conducted by scientists from Duke University, East Carolina University, Yale University, and Humacyte, and was funded by Humacyte, a leader in regenerative medicine. Overseeing the research and senior author of the article was Laura Niklason, M.D., Ph.D., founder of Humacyte, and Professor of Anesthesiology and of Biomedical Engineering at Yale University. Niklason is a recognized authority in regenerative medicine for arterial engineering and was leader of the team that recently created a functioning rat lung in a laboratory.

“Not only are bioengineered veins available at the time of patient need, but the ability to generate a significant number of grafts from a cell bank will allow for a reduction in the final production costs, as compared to other regenerative medicine strategies,” added lead author Shannon L. M. Dahl, Senior Director of Scientific Operations and Co-Founder of Humacyte, Inc. “While there is still considerable research to be done before a product is available for widespread use, we are highly encouraged by the results outlined in this paper and eager to move forward with additional study,” Dahl said.

About The Research

In this research, bioengineered veins were generated in a bioreactor, decellularized, and stored up to 12 months in refrigerated conditions. Then bioengineered veins (3-6mm in diameter) demonstrated excellent blood flow and resistance to occlusion in large animal models for up to one year.

Image: A 6 mm-diameter decellularized human bioengineered vein before implant. Credit: Science/AAAS
Source: Reprinted news release via Humacyte

New Nanomaterials Unlock New Electronic And Energy Technologies

2011-02-05T21:15:00.000-06:00

A new way of splitting layered materials to give atom thin "nanosheets" has been discovered. This has led to a range of novel two-dimensional nanomaterials with chemical and electronic properties that have the potential to enable new electronic and energy storage technologies. The collaborative* international research led by the Centre for Research on Adaptive Nanostructures and Nanodevices (CRANN), Trinity College Dublin, Ireland, and the University of Oxford has been published in this week's Science.

The scientists have invented a versatile method for creating these atom thin nanosheets from a range of materials using common solvents and ultrasound, utilising devices similar to those used to clean jewellery. The new method is simple, fast, and inexpensive, and could be scaled up to work on an industrial scale.

"Of the many possible applications of these new nanosheets, perhaps the most important are as thermoelectric materials. These materials, when fabricated into devices, can generate electricity from waste heat. For example, in gas-fired power plants approximately 50% of energy produced is lost as waste heat while for coal and oil plants the figure is up to 70%. However, the development of efficient thermoelectric devices would allow some of this waste heat to be recycled cheaply and easily, something that has been beyond us, up until now," explained Professor Jonathan Coleman, Principal Investigator at CRANN and the School of Physics, Trinity College Dublin who led the research along with Dr Valeria Nicolosi in the Department of Materials at the University of Oxford.

This research can be compared to the work regarding the two-dimensional material graphene, which won the Nobel Prize in 2010. Graphene has generated significant interest because when separated into individual flakes, it has exceptional electronic and mechanical properties that are very different to those of its parent crystal, graphite. However, graphite is just one of hundreds of layered materials, some of which may enable powerful new technologies.

Coleman's work will open up over 150 similarly exotic layered materials – such as Boron Nitride, Molybdenum disulfide, and Bismuth telluride – that have the potential to be metallic, semiconducting or insulating, depending on their chemical composition and how their atoms are arranged. This new family of materials opens a whole range of new "super" materials.

For decades researchers have tried to create nanosheets from layered materials in order to unlock their unusual electronic and thermoelectric properties. However, previous methods were time consuming, laborious or of very low yield and so unsuited to most applications.

"Our new method offers low-costs, a very high yield and a very large throughput: within a couple of hours, and with just 1 mg of material, billions and billions of one-atom-thick nanosheets can be made at the same time from a wide variety of exotic layered materials," explained Dr Nicolosi, from the University of Oxford.

These new materials are also suited for use in next generation batteries – "supercapacitors" – which can deliver energy thousands of times faster than standard batteries, enabling new applications such as electric cars. Many of these new atomic layered materials are very strong and can be added to plastics to produce super-strong composites. These will be useful in a range of industries from simple structural plastics to aeronautics.

Source: Reprinted news release via Trinity College Dublin

Future Surgeons May Use Robotic Nurse, 'Gesture Recognition'

2011-02-05T21:13:00.000-06:00

Surgeons of the future might use a system that recognizes hand gestures as commands to control a robotic scrub nurse or tell a computer to display medical images of the patient during an operation.

Both the hand-gesture recognition and robotic nurse innovations might help to reduce the length of surgeries and the potential for infection, said Juan Pablo Wachs, an assistant professor of industrial engineering at Purdue University.

The "vision-based hand gesture recognition" technology could have other applications, including the coordination of emergency response activities during disasters.

"It's a concept Tom Cruise demonstrated vividly in the film 'Minority Report,'" Wachs said.

Surgeons routinely need to review medical images and records during surgery, but stepping away from the operating table and touching a keyboard and mouse can delay the surgery and increase the risk of spreading infection-causing bacteria.

The new approach is a system that uses a camera and specialized algorithms to recognize hand gestures as commands to instruct a computer or robot.

At the same time, a robotic scrub nurse represents a potential new tool that might improve operating-room efficiency, Wachs said.

Findings from the research will be detailed in a paper appearing in the February issue of Communications of the ACM, the flagship publication of the Association for Computing Machinery. The paper, featured on the journal's cover, was written by researchers at Purdue, the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif., and Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel.

Research into hand-gesture recognition began several years ago in work led by the Washington Hospital Center and Ben-Gurion University, where Wachs was a research fellow and doctoral student, respectively.

He is now working to extend the system's capabilities in research with Purdue's School of Veterinary Medicine and the Department of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences.

"One challenge will be to develop the proper shapes of hand poses and the proper hand trajectory movements to reflect and express certain medical functions," Wachs said. "You want to use intuitive and natural gestures for the surgeon, to express medical image navigation activities, but you also need to consider cultural and physical differences between surgeons. They may have different preferences regarding what gestures they may want to use."

Other challenges include providing computers with the ability to understand the context in which gestures are made and to discriminate between intended gestures versus unintended gestures.

"Say the surgeon starts talking to another person in the operating room and makes conversational gestures," Wachs said. "You don't want the robot handing the surgeon a hemostat."

A scrub nurse assists the surgeon and hands the proper surgical instruments to the doctor when needed.

"While it will be very difficult using a robot to achieve the same level of performance as an experienced nurse who has been working with the same surgeon for years, often scrub nurses have had very limited experience with a particular surgeon, maximizing the chances for misunderstandings, delays and sometimes mistakes in the operating room," Wachs said. "In that case, a robotic scrub nurse could be better."

The Purdue researcher has developed a prototype robotic scrub nurse, in work with faculty in the university's School of Veterinary Medicine.

Researchers at other institutions developing robotic scrub nurses have focused on voice recognition. However, little work has been done in the area of gesture recognition, Wachs said.

"Another big difference between our focus and the others is that we are also working on prediction, to anticipate what images the surgeon will need to see next and what instruments will be needed," he said.

Wachs is developing advanced algorithms that isolate the hands and apply "anthropometry," or predicting the position of the hands based on knowledge of where the surgeon's head is. The tracking is achieved through a camera mounted over the screen used for visualization of images.

"Another contribution is that by tracking a surgical instrument inside the patient's body, we can predict the most likely area that the surgeon may want to inspect using the electronic image medical record, and therefore saving browsing time between the images," Wachs said. "This is done using a different sensor mounted over the surgical lights."

The hand-gesture recognition system uses a new type of camera developed by Microsoft, called Kinect, which senses three-dimensional space. The camera is found in new consumer electronics games that can track a person's hands without the use of a wand.

"You just step into the operating room, and automatically your body is mapped in 3-D," he said.

Accuracy and gesture-recognition speed depend on advanced software algorithms.

"Even if you have the best camera, you have to know how to program the camera, how to use the images," Wachs said. "Otherwise, the system will work very slowly."

The research paper defines a set of requirements, including recommendations that the system should:

* Use a small vocabulary of simple, easily recognizable gestures.
* Not require the user to wear special virtual reality gloves or certain types of clothing.
* Be as low-cost as possible.
* Be responsive and able to keep up with the speed of a surgeon's hand gestures.
* Let the user know whether it understands the hand gestures by providing feedback, perhaps just a simple "OK."
* Use gestures that are easy for surgeons to learn, remember and carry out with little physical exertion.
* Be highly accurate in recognizing hand gestures.
* Use intuitive gestures, such as two fingers held apart to mimic a pair of scissors.
* Be able to disregard unintended gestures by the surgeon, perhaps made in conversation with colleagues in the operating room.
* Be able to quickly configure itself to work properly in different operating rooms, under various lighting conditions and other criteria.

"Eventually we also want to integrate voice recognition, but the biggest challenges are in gesture recognition," Wachs said. "Much is already known about voice recognition."

Image: Robotic nurse. Credit: Purdue University photo/Mark Simons

Source: Reprinted news release via Purdue University

Cluster Encounters A Natural Particle Accelerator

2011-02-05T21:09:00.000-06:00

ESA's Cluster satellites have flown through a natural particle accelerator just above Earth's atmosphere. The data they collected are unlocking how most of the dramatic displays of the northern and southern lights are generated.

Two of Cluster's four satellites found themselves in a natural particle accelerator above the northern hemisphere on 5 June 2009. The first to cross was satellite C3 at an altitude of 6400 km, followed five minutes later by C1 at 9000 km.

This is the first time that scientists have measured such a region simultaneously using more than one satellite. The readings allow the electrical landscape of the acceleration region to be mapped.

"This is like geography, only instead of the contours being the height of a landscape, they are the electrical potentials that span the region," says Göran Marklund from the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden.

These electrical potentials act in both uphill and downhill directions, accelerating particles towards and away from Earth, according to their charges.

When particles strike the atmosphere, they create the shimmering curtains of light known as the aurora, or more commonly the northern and southern lights. About two-thirds of the bright auroras are estimated to be produced in this way.

Since 2006, the Cluster satellites have been drifting away from their initial orbits because they are being constantly nudged by the gravity of the Moon and the Sun. Fortuitously, the current orbit occasionally passes through the Auroral Acceleration Region, which spans 4000 km to 12000 km above our planet.

The satellites do not encounter a natural particle accelerator on every orbit. Those responsible for the bright auroras are temporary alignments of the electrical fields around Earth. They are highly variable in altitude and so not always present.

This first encounter with a natural particle accelerator associated with a large-scale aurora has proved that they may be stable for at least five minutes. A few more encounters are expected in the near future before Cluster's orbit drifts back out of the region.

"Cluster has now shown us the very heart of the acceleration process responsible for most bright auroras. It has given us our first look at the electrical structure and stability of such an accelerator," says Prof. Marklund.

Such natural particle accelerators pop up ubiquitously throughout the Solar System, especially in the strong magnetic fields of the gas giants Jupiter and Saturn.

The new results from Cluster allow theoreticians to place much tighter constraints on their models of exactly how such accelerators work and give greater insight into the workings of space plasma.

Source: Reprinted news release via European Space Agency

Rare Meteorites Reveal Mars Collision Caused Water Flow

2011-02-05T21:08:00.000-06:00

Rare fragments of Martian meteorites have been investigated at the University of Leicester revealing one of the ways water flowed near the surface of Mars.

Scientists at the University's renowned Space Research Centre, in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, examined five meteorite samples – including the very first nakhlite, found a century ago.

Nakhlites are a form of meteorite known to have originated on Mars. They are named after the village of El-Nakhla in Egypt where the first one was found in 1911.

Findings from the research have been published in Meteoritics and Planetary Science (Dec. 2010 issue, vol 45). The research was funded by the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC).

Hitesh Changela and Dr John Bridges used electron microscopes in the University's Advanced Microscopy Centre to study the structure and composition of five nakhlites, including the 1911 specimen, which is housed in the collections of the Natural History Museum, London. Minute wafers of rock, about 0.1 microns thick, were milled off the meteorites as part of the research.

By comparing the five meteorites, they showed the presence of veins created during an impact on Mars. They suggest that this impact was associated with a 1-10 km diameter crater. Buried ice melted during this impact depositing clay, serpentine, carbonate and a gel deposit in the veins.

This work closely ties in to recent geological discoveries of clay and carbonate on the surface of Mars made by NASA and ESA probes, and shows how some of it probably formed. Serpentine mineralisation is associated with the production of methane. It is the purpose of the 2016 Trace Gas Orbiter mission to search for and understand the origin of any methane in the Mars atmosphere as it can be a biomarker. This work shows one of the ways that methane was probably produced.

Dr Bridges, who is supervising Hitesh's PhD, said, "We are now starting to build a realistic model for how water deposited minerals formed on Mars, showing that impact heating was an important process. The constraints we are establishing about temperature, pH and duration of the hydrothermal action help us to better understand the evolution of the Mars surface. This directly ties in with the current activities of landing site selection for Mars rovers and Mars Sample Return. With models like this we will better understand the areas where we think that water was once present on Mars.

Source: Reprinted news release via University of Leicester