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DARPA (US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), nanoparticles, and your traumatized brain

Friday, May 10th, 2013

According to the May 10, 2013 news item on Nanowerk,

DARPA, the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, has awarded $6 million to a team of researchers to develop nanotechnology therapies for the treatment of traumatic brain injury and associated infections.

Led by Professor Michael J. Sailor, Ph.D., from the University of California San Diego [UC San Diego], the award brings together a multi-disciplinary team of renowned experts in laboratory research, translational investigation and clinical medicine, including Erkki Ruoslahti, M.D., Ph.D. of Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute, Sangeeta N. Bhatia, M.D., Ph.D. of Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Clark C. Chen, M.D., Ph.D. of UC San Diego School of Medicine.

Ballistics injuries that penetrate the skull have amounted to 18 percent of battlefield wounds sustained by men and women who served in the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to the most recent estimate from the Joint Theater Trauma Registry, a compilation of data collected during Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom.

“A major contributor to the mortality associated with a penetrating brain injury is the elevated risk of intracranial infection,” said Chen, a neurosurgeon with UC San Diego Health System, noting that projectiles drive contaminated foreign materials into neural tissue.

The May 9, 2013 UC San Diego news release by Susan Brown, which originated the news item, describes the reasons why DARPA wants to use nanoparticles in therapies for people suffering from traumatic brain injury,

Under normal conditions, the brain is protected from infection by a physiological system called the blood-brain barrier. “Unfortunately, those same natural defense mechanisms make it difficult to get antibiotics to the brain once an infection has taken hold,” said Chen, associate professor and vice-chair of research in the Division of Neurosurgery at UC San Diego School of Medicine.

DARPA hopes to meet these challenges with nanotechnology. The agency awarded this grant under its In Vivo Nanoplatforms for Therapeutics program to construct nanoparticles that can find and treat infections and other damage associated with traumatic brain injuries.

“Our approach is focused on porous nanoparticles that contain highly effective therapeutics on the inside and targeting molecules on the outside,” said Sailor, the UC San Diego materials chemist who leads the team. “When injected into the blood stream, we have found that these silicon-based particles can target certain tissues very effectively.”

Several types of nanoparticles have already been approved for clinical use in patients, but none for treatment of trauma or diseases in the brain. This is due in part to the inability of nanoparticle formulations to cross the blood-brain barrier and reach their intended targets.

“Poor penetration into tissues limits the application of nanoparticles to the treatment of many types of diseases,” said Ruoslahti, distinguished professor at Sanford-Burnham and partner in the research. “We are trying to overcome this limitation using targeting molecules that activate tissue-specific transport pathways to deliver nanoparticles.”

There is another major hurdle for treating brain injuries (from the news release),

Treating brain infections is becoming more difficult as drug-resistant strains of viruses and bacteria have emerged. Because drug-resistant strains mutate and evolve rapidly, researchers must constantly adjust their approach to treatment.

In an attempt to hit this moving target, the team is making their systems modular, so they can be reconfigured “on-the-fly” with the latest therapeutic advances.

Nanocomplexes that contain genetic material known as short interfering RNA, or siRNA, developed by Bhatia’s research group at MIT, will be key to this aspect of the team’s approach.

“The function of this type of RNA is that it specifically intereferes with processes in a diseased cell. The advantage of RNA therapies are that they can be quickly and easily modified when a new disease target emerges,” said Bhatia, a bioengineering professor at MIT and partner in the research.

But effective delivery of siRNA-based therapeutics in the body has proven to be a challenge because the negative charge and chemical structure of naked siRNA makes it very unstable in the body and it has difficulty crossing into diseased cells. To solve these problems, Bhatia has developed nanoparticles that form a protective coating around siRNA.

“The nanocomplexes we are developing shield the negative charge of RNA and protect it from nucleases that would normally destroy it. Adding Erkki’s tissue homing and cell-penetrating peptides allows the nanocomplex to transport deep into tissue and enter the diseased cells,” she said.

Bhatia has previously used the cell-penetrating nanocomplex to deliver siRNA to a tumor cell and shut down its protein production machinery. Although her group’s effort has focused on cancer, the team is now going after two other hard-to-treat cell types: drug-resistant bacteria and inflammatory cells in the brain.

“The work proposed by this multi-disciplinary team should provide new tools to mitigate the debilitating effects of penetrating brain injuries and offer our warfighters the best chance of meaningful recovery,” Chen said. [emphasis mine]

BTW, the term ‘warfighters’ is new to me; are we replacing the word ‘soldier’?

Returning to the matter at hand, I found DARPA’s In Vivo Nanoplatforms for Therapeutics program which is described this way on its home page,

Disease limits soldier readiness and creates healthcare costs and logistics burdens. Diagnosing and treating disease faster can help limit its impact. [emphasis mine] Current technologies and products for diagnosing disease are principally relegated to in vitro (in the lab) medical devices, which are often expensive, bulky and fragile.

DARPA’s In Vivo Nanoplatforms (IVN) program seeks to develop new classes of adaptable nanoparticles for persistent, distributed, unobtrusive physiologic and environmental sensing as well as the treatment of physiologic abnormalities, illness and infectious disease.

The IVN Diagnostics (IVN:Dx) program effort aims to develop a generalized in vivo platform that provides continuous physiological monitoring for the warfighter. [emphasis mine] Specifically, IVN:Dx will investigate technologies that may provide:

  • Implantable nanoplatforms using bio-compatible and nontoxic materials
  • In vivo sensing of small and large molecules of biological interest
  • Multiplexed detection of analytes at clinically relevant concentrations
  • External interrogation of the nanoplatform free from any implanted communications electronics
  • Complete system demonstration in a large animal

The IVN Therapeutics (IVN:Tx) program effort will seek unobtrusive nanoplatforms for rapidly treating disease in warfighters.

(I see DARPA is using both soldier and warfighter’.)

This team is not the only one wishing to deliver drug therapies in a targeted fashion to the brain. My Feb. 19, 2013 posting mentioned Chad Mirkin (Northwestern University) and his team’s efforts with spherical nucleic acids (SNAs), from the posting,

Potential applications include using SNAs to carry nucleic acid-based therapeutics to the brain for the treatment of glioblastoma, the most aggressive form of brain cancer, as well as other neurological disorders such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases. Mirkin is aggressively pursuing treatments for such diseases with Alexander H. Stegh, an assistant professor of neurology at Northwestern’s Feinberg School of Medicine. (originally excerpted from this the Feb. 15, 2013 news release on EurekAlert)

Coincidentally, Mirkin has just been named ‘Chemistry World Entrepreneur of the Year’ by the UK’s Royal Society of Chemistry, from the May 10, 2013 news item on Nanowerk,

Northwestern University scientist Chad A. Mirkin, a world-renowned leader in nanotechnology research and its application, has been named 2013 Chemistry World Entrepreneur of the Year by the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC). The award recognizes an individual’s contribution to the commercialization of research.

The RSC is honoring Mirkin for his invention of spherical nucleic acids (SNAs), new globular forms of DNA and RNA. These structures form the basis for more than 300 products commercialized by licensees of the technology.

I’m never quite sure what to make of researchers who receive public funding then patent and license the results of that research.

Getting back to soldiers/warfighters, I’m glad to see this research being pursued. Years ago, a physician mentioned to me that soldiers in Iraq were surviving injuries that would have killed them in previous conflicts. The problem is that the same protective gear which insulates soldiers against many injuries makes them vulnerable to abusive head trauma (same principle as ‘shaken baby syndrome’). For example, imagine having a high velocity bullet hit your helmet. You’re protected from the bullet but the impact shakes your head so violently, your brain is injured.

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Sea sponges inspire body armour of the future

Friday, March 15th, 2013

A Mar. 15, 2013 news item on ScienceDaily features research inspired by sea sponges,

Scientists at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) and the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research (MPI-P) in Germany have created a new synthetic hybrid material with a mineral content of almost 90 percent, yet extremely flexible. They imitated the structural elements found in most sea sponges and recreated the sponge spicules using the natural mineral calcium carbonate and a protein of the sponge. Natural minerals are usually very hard and prickly, as fragile as porcelain.

Amazingly, the synthetic spicules are superior to their natural counterparts in terms of flexibility, exhibiting a rubber-like flexibility. The synthetic spicules can, for example, easily be U-shaped without breaking or showing any signs of fracture. …

Spicules are structural elements found in most sea sponges. They provide structural support and deter predators. They are very hard, prickly, and even quite difficult to cut with a knife. The spicules of sponges thus offer a perfect example of a lightweight, tough, and impenetrable defense system, which may inspire engineers to create body armors of the future.

I found an image of a sea sponge (this may not be exactly the same type of sponge that inspired the latest work but I think there are enough similarities to the description the researchers give to  include it here) and more information in a Nov. 13, 2008 post by Ed Grabianows on IO9.com,

Downloaded from: http://io9.com/5085064/giant-deep-sea-sponges-evolved-fiber-optic-exoskeletons

Downloaded from: http://io9.com/5085064/giant-deep-sea-sponges-evolved-fiber-optic-exoskeletons

This gigantic sea sponge has an exoskeleton made of glass rods, and each rod can grow up to a meter in length. In the deep sea, these massive sponges contain a menagerie of other tiny lifeforms, all dependent on their sea sponge hosts for something in short supply far under the water. They need light – and some sponges have a [sic] evolved a way to provide it using fiber optics.Sea sponges are among the most primitive animals on Earth. …

Here’s more about the research (from the ScienceDaily news item),

 The researchers led by Wolfgang Tremel, Professor at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, and Hans-Jürgen Butt, Director at the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research in Mainz, used these natural sponge spicules as a model to cultivate them in the lab. The synthetic spicules were made from calcite (CaCO3) and silicatein-α. The latter is a protein from siliceous sponges that, in nature, catalyzes the formation of silica, which forms the natural silica spicules of sponges. Silicatein-α was used in the lab setting to control the self-organization of the calcite spicules. The synthetic material was self-assembled from an amorphous calcium carbonate intermediate and silicatein and subsequently aged to the final crystalline material. After six months, the synthetic spicules consisted of calcite nanocrystals aligned in a brick wall fashion with the protein embedded like cement in the boundaries between the calcite nanocrystals. The spicules were of 10 to 300 micrometers in length with a diameter of 5 to 10 micrometers.

… the synthetic spicules have yet another special characteristic, i.e., they are able to transmit light waves even when they are bent.

The researchers have created a video animation to illustrate their work,

For those who would like to find out more about the research, there’s a citation for and a link to the researchers’ paper here.

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Anti-exorcist engineers create ghosts but not in a killing kind of way

Wednesday, February 20th, 2013

Generally speaking most of us would choose to exorcise ghosts but there are scientists who are working to create them as a Feb. 19, 2013 news item on ScienceDaily notes,

A team at the NUS [National University of Singapore] Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering led by Dr Qiu Cheng-Wei has come out with an optical device to “engineer” ghosts.

When someone claims he or she has seen a ghost, the phenomenon may be caused by an optical illusion happening through a wild stroke of nature. But the actual engineering of such a phenomenon is the holy grail of researchers in the field of optical illusions, electromagnetic, and radar detection — not only because of the thrill and excitement of being able to create a “ghost” but because of the implications it will have in science and applications.

Their research has opened up a completely new avenue for cognitive deception through light-matter behaviour control. [emphasis mine] This would have wide applications in defence and security. Their findings will also pave the way for the design of new optical and microwave devices such as those for detection and communication. The team will further develop this technique to make larger microwave devices to achieve radar “ghosts” and aircraft camouflage suitable for defence purpose.

Dr Qiu’s paper, co-authored with and Dr Han Tiancheng (NUS Dept of Electrical & Computer Engineering), Prof Tie Jun Cui, Dr Wei Xiang Jiang (State Key Laboratory of Millimeter Waves, Department of Radio Engineering, Nanjing), and Prof Shuang Zhang (School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Birmingham, UK), entitled “Creation of Ghost Illusions Using Metamaterials in Wave Dynamics” will be published in Advanced Functional Materials in March 2013.

…

…  Dr Qiu’s device can create multiple “ghosts.” It can also make the real object or person “disappear.” The researchers can also determine how the “ghosts” look, taking on a different shape or size from the actual object.

I would imagine that magicians and con artists everywhere would also be very interested in ‘creating ghosts’ and ‘disappearing’. In fact, this might have applications in the fields of design and architecture. What if you could create a beautiful view by making a series of parking lots and dull concrete buildings disappear and replacing them with ‘ghost mountains or beaches’? No doubt this thinking is so wishful it could be described as science fiction at this time. Still, it is amusing to speculate.

For those with more practical interests, you can get the full citation for the forthcoming published study from the ScienceDaily news item or you can preview an earlier version of the article at arXiv.org (open access),

Creation of Ghost Illusions Using Metamaterials in Wave Dynamics by Weixiang Jiang, Cheng-Wei Qiu, Tiancheng Han, Shuang Zhang, Tiejun Cui (Submitted on 16 Jan 2013) arXiv.org > physics > arXiv:1301.3710

Happily, there’s a more or less song-appropriate choice for this work about creating ghosts, Exorcising Ghosts. Here’s the promo for the song,

You can find John Piccari performing his entire song here, http://youtu.be/dJkESTf4EyI.

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US Federal Bureau of Investigation talked nano at the University of Notre Dame

Monday, January 28th, 2013

A Sept. 2012 US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) workshop held at the University of Notre Dame (Indiana) has spawned an article about ‘dual-use’ nanotechnology by Professor Kathleen Eggleson of the University of Notre Dame’s Center for Nano Science and Technology, from the Jan. 25, 2013 news release on EurekAlert,

Every day scientists learn more about how the world works at the smallest scales. While this knowledge has the potential to help others, it’s possible that the same discoveries can also be used in ways that cause widespread harm.

A new article in the journal Nanomedicine, born out of a Federal Bureau of Investigation workshop held at the University of Notre Dame in September 2012, tackles this complex “dual-use” aspect of nanotechnology research.

Here are the specifics,

The report examines the potential for nano-sized particles (which are measured in billionths of a meter) to breach the blood-brain barrier, the tightly knit layers of cells that afford the brain the highest level of protection—from microorganisms, harmful molecules, etc.—in the human body. Some neuroscientists are purposefully engineering nanoparticles that can cross the blood-brain barrier (BBB) so as to deliver medicines in a targeted and controlled way directly to diseased parts of the brain.

At the same time, the report notes, “nanoparticles designed to cross the BBB constitute a serious threat…in the context of combat.” For example, it is theorized that “aerosol delivery” of some nano-engineered agent in “a crowded indoor space” could cause serious harm to many people at once.

The problem of dual-use research was highlighted last year when controversy erupted over the publication of findings that indicate how, with a handful modifications, the H5N1 influenza virus (“bird flu”) can be altered in a way that would enable it to be transmitted between mammalian populations.

After a self-imposed one-year moratorium on this research, several laboratories around the world announced that they will restart the work in early 2013.

The FBI is actively responding to these developments in the scientific community.

This is what the FBI and Eggleson have to say about the relation between science and law enforcement,

“The law enforcement-security community seeks to strengthen the existing dialogue with researchers,” William So of the FBI’s Biological Countermeasures Unit says in the study.

“Science flourishes because of the open and collaborative atmosphere for sharing and discussing ideas. The FBI believes this model can do the same for our two communities…[and] create effective safeguards for science and national interests.”

The scientists and engineers who conduct nanoscale research have the ability and responsibility to consider the public safety aspects of their research and to act to protect society when necessary, argues Eggleson.

“The relationship between science and society is an uneasy one, but it is undeniable on the whole and not something any individual can opt out of in the name of progress for humanity’s benefit,” she says.

“Thought about dual-use, and action when appropriate, is inherent to socially responsible practice of nanobiomedical science.”

Here’s a citation and link to Eggleson’s article,

Dual-use nanoresearch of concern: Recognizing threat and safeguarding the power of nanobiomedical research advances in the wake of the H5N1 controversy by Kathleen Eggleson. In Nanomedicine: Nanotechnology, Biology and Medicine (article in press) advance article published online 17 January 2013.

This article is behind a paywall. There are two abstracts, one is a standard text-based abstract and the other is a graphical abstract,

Graphical Abstract 

From deliberate translocation of nanoparticles across the blood-brain barrier to virulence factors in the genomic era, this article argues that issues of dual-use or DURC are pertinent to the broader scientific community. Awareness of potential misuse, and communicative action when warranted, is of particular importance for nanobiomedical researchers.

GraphicalAbstractjpg

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An invisibility cloak close to home courtesy of HyperStealth Biotechnology Corp.

Monday, January 7th, 2013

H/T (hat tip) to My Science Academy and its early Jan. 2013 article titled 27 Science Fictions That Became Science Facts in 2012 for the information about an invisibility cloak that has been developed by HyperStealth Biotechnology Corp. based in Maple Ridge, BC, Canada.  Here’s more from the company’s Oct. 19, 2012 news release,

Once thought to be only a Science Fiction/Fantasy technology, Guy Cramer, President/CEO of Hyperstealth Biotechnology Corp., discusses the implications of militaries which can now become invisible with his light bending technology called “Quantum Stealth”.

Hyperstealth is a successful Canadian camouflage design company with over two million military issued uniforms and over 3000 vehicles and fighter jets using their patterns around the world.

Quantum Stealth is a material that renders the target completely invisible by bending light waves around the target. The material removes not only your visual, infrared (night vision) and thermal signatures but also the target’s shadow.

Two separate command groups within the U.S. Military and two separate Canadian Military groups as well as Federal Emergency Response Team (Counter Terrorism) have seen the actual material so they could verify that I was not just manipulating video or photo results; These groups now know that it works and does so without cameras, batteries, lights or mirrors…It is lightweight and quite inexpensive. Both the U.S. and Canadian military have confirmed that it also works against military IR scopes and Thermal Optics.

This  brief video interview of Guy Cramer highlights various company products including Quantum Stealth ,

Cramer has included a number of updates, corrections, and additions to his  company’s Oct. 19, 2012 news release (which you will see if you keep scrolling down past the original release) ,

Isn’t there a risk that someone else may figure this out or copy what you’ve done? Yes, but I’ve already developed a countermeasure for Quantum Stealth so we would be able to detect anyone else with something identical or similar to Quantum Stealth.

Do I care that people remain skeptical? Nope, the people that need to know that it works have seen it and verified it and their opinions are the only ones that matter.

Will Quantum Stealth be available for the general public or commercial market? Not in the near future unless the Military decided to release the technology and I don’t anticipate that will happen anytime soon.

Is there anything planned for the commercial market? I am working on a number of non-powered color changing camouflage materials for the commercial market which utilize different technologies than either Quantum Stealth or Smartcamo. Colors change with climate, seasons cause environmental colors to change and even the 24 hour day can cause a large color discrepancy between camouflage and the background as day becomes night. People want camouflage which can change with these variables.

Have you made camouflage obsolete? Not necessarily, standard camouflage should continue to have its place, however, on the front lines it might become your second choice behind Quantum Stealth if you’re Canadian, American or British and your group is authorized to use it.

…

Update: December 18, 2012

I, Guy Cramer, have conducted about 20 interviews on this subject, however, there are now over 5,000 worldwide news stories that have come out in the past 8 days. With the internet, one news group just plagiarizes a previous story and fact checking is out the window. Some of you may remember the game as a child where you whisper a phrase in the ear of the first person and they whisper the same phase to the next person…10 people later you ask the last person to say the phase that they just were whispered and the phase is often completely different.

Some inaccuracies have come up which need clarification – if you have read this whole page you know the photos are mock-ups to show the concept, we have never told the media that these are photos of the real technology and in fact we’ve asked them to mark the photos as mock-ups or explain it on T.V.- but doing so doesn’t sell the story, so most of the articles leave this key point out. I started the process of correcting the reporters with the first reports I could find that did not mention this correctly such as http://www.businessinsider.com/cnn-new-camoflague-technology-makes-troops-invisible-2012-12 (these two reporters never did correct it after I asked them to) but the story went viral. There is no way for me to get 5,000 news sources to mark the images as mockups that didn’t even bother to interview me in the first place. I have not been dishonest about this, the reporters have.

I’ve never been to the Pentagon and the Pentagon is not backing our Light Bending technology at this time, this inaccuracy came about from the Daily Mail article where they combined the information on this page with the CNN interview where the reported [sic] is a Pentagon correspondent – but the Daily Mail never interviewed me, their online story is one key article that caused the story to go viral. I have only claimed that two separate U.S. Military command groups have seen demonstrations of the material, this doesn’t mean the Pentagon was one of them. The Canadian Government only provided authorization 2 weeks ago to be able to move forward with the U.S. Military regarding this technology.

Canadian Foreign Affairs is involved in determining the potential restrictions and clearance in moving forward with the British Military and will not make a decision until at least the Spring of 2013. At their request, I did a presentation of the technology at British Military Headquarters in Bristol in 2011 as well as the SBS (Special Boat Service) in Poole accompanied by two former U.S. Navy SEALs, one being Bill Jarvis mentioned in an earlier update.

Some critics are claiming that our technology (if it works) must only work in one direction at one angle. I can tell you that we have demonstrated that it can work in 360 degrees meaning you will see what is on the other side of the target and some one at a different angle will see what is immediately behind the target from their vantage point.

This story is not new, the “Atlantic” magazine article published in July 2011 discussed the technology from a video I showed him and the same reporter was shown our actual Smartcamo (color changing material) and confirmed that technology really works. It is only recently that the media has become focused on light bending technology due to the CNN interview which was not our intended story with them but when a three hour interview with CNN is cut into 2 minutes, the focus of their story was on this and not on the ADS Inc./Guy Cramer US4CES Family of camouflage finalist with the U.S. Army camouflage improvement program, which is the initial story they were there for.

There was no biographical information (that I could find) for Cramer on the company website but there is this in an April 22, 2011 posting on the Tactical Gear Military Clothing News site,

Guy Cramer is the President/CEO of HyperStealth Biotechnology Corp. CCD (Camouflage, Concealment & Deception) Specialist, IT Analyst: Level 4, Inventor of the Passive Negative Ion Generator, World Expert on Air Ions as per NASA JPL. He has worked on projects with, NASA Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps, U.S. Army, U.S. Navy, and Senator John Warner’s office while he was Chairman of the Armed Services Committee. Cramer also worked under the direct commission of King Abdullah II of Jordan. He is the former research assistant and grandson to Donald L. Hings, P.Eng, M.B.E. (Member of British Empire), C.M. (Order of Canada) inventor of the Walkie-Talkie prior to WWII. Cramer has designed over 9,000 camouflage patterns for over 34 countries and recently developed Smartcamo, a textile which can change color to match the surrounding environment.

It’s a shame there aren’t more technical details about Quantum Stealth as it would be interesting for someone to compare and contrast this technology with other light bending technologies (invisibility cloaks).

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Better night vision goggles for the military

Wednesday, January 2nd, 2013

I remember a military type, a friend who served as a Canadian peacekeeper (Infantry) in the Balkans, describing night-vision goggles and mentioning they are loud. After all, it’s imaging equipment and that requires a power source or, in this case, a source of noise. The Dec. 29, 2012 news item on Nanowerk about improved imaging for night vision goggles doesn’t mention noise but hopefully, the problem has been addressed or mitigated (assuming this technology is meant to be worn),

Through some key breakthroughs in flexible semiconductors, electrical and computer engineering Professor Zhenqiang “Jack” Ma has created two imaging technologies that have potential applications beyond the 21st century battlefield.

With $750,000 in support from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR), Ma has developed curved night-vision goggles using germanium nanomembranes.

The Dec. 28, 2012 University of Wisconsin-Madison news release, which originated the news item, describes the Air Force project and another night vision project for the US Department of Defense,

Creating night-vision goggles with a curved surface allows a wider field of view for pilots, but requires highly photosensitive materials with mechanical bendability-the silicon used in conventional image sensors doesn’t cut it.

…  Ma’s design employs flexible germanium nanomembranes: a transferrable flexible semiconductor that until now has been too challenging to use in imagers due to a high dark current, the background electrical current that flows through photosensitive materials even when they aren’t exposed to light.

“Because of their higher dark current, the image often comes up much noisier on germanium-based imagers,” says Ma. “We solved that problem.”

Ma’s dark current reduction technology has also been recently licensed to Intel.

In another imaging project, the U.S. Department of Defense has provided Ma with $750,000 in support of development of imagers for military surveillance that span multiple spectra, combining infrared and visible light into a single image.

“The reason they are interested in IR is because visible light can be blocked by clouds, dust, smoke,” says Ma. “IR can go through, so simultaneous visible and IR imaging allows them to see everything.”

Inexpensive silicon makes production of visible light imagers a simple task, but IR relies on materials incompatible with silicon.

The current approach involves a sensor for IR images and a sensor for visible light, combining the two images in post-processing, which requires greater computing power and hardware complexity. Instead, Ma will employ a heterogeneous semiconductor nanomembrane, stacking the two incompatible materials in each pixel of the new imager to layer IR and visible images on top of one another in a single image.

The result will be imagers that can seamlessly shift between IR and visible images, allowing the picture to be richer and more quickly utilized for strategic decisionmaking.

It’s impossible to tell from the description if this particular technology will be worn by foot soldiers or human military personnel but, in the event it will be worn,  it does well to remember that it will need a power source. Interestingly, the average soldier already carries a lot of weight in batteries (up to 35 pounds!) as per my May 9, 2012 posting about energy-harvesting textiles and the military.

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Carbon nanotubes, helicopters, and Ethan Chu (winner of the second annual Sikorsky Helicopter 2050 Challenge)

Monday, December 17th, 2012

The Dec. 15, 2012 news item on Azonano about the winner of the 2nd annual Sikorsky 2050 Helicopter Challenge provides details about the contest, its theme, and the winning entry (which includes carbon nanotubes as part of its solution to creating an environmentally friendly helicopter),

The Igor Sikorsky Youth Innovator Award is the grand prize for the Sikorsky Helicopter 2050 Challenge, a national competition started in 2011 sponsored by Sikorsky Aircraft and By Kids For Kids. This year’s program challenged youths ages 9-16 across the U.S. to envision an environmentally friendly helicopter. The competition rated designs for concept uniqueness, description detail and creativity of the presentation.

Ethan portrays his winning design as a compact, circular-shaped twin-engine helicopter dubbed the AH-9 Diamondback. High strength materials in the form of lightweight carbon nanotubes covered with titanium panels comprise the helicopter’s structure, a design approach that reduces the aircraft’s weight and fuel consumption, and improves its carrying capacity. His environmentally friendly design further reduces carbon footprint by channeling engine exhaust along the rotor blades and around the body of the aircraft to provide a cushion of gas for additional lift — an aerodynamic principle known as the Coanda Effect.

“We were impressed with the strong scientific reasoning and the good deal of thought that Ethan put into his innovative submission,” said Vern Van Fleet , a chief test engineer for Sikorsky Military Systems. “And he never lost sight of the competition theme, which was to produce an environmentally friendly helicopter.”

From the 2nd Annual Helicopter 2050 Challenge home page

Winners of the 2nd (2012) Annual Helicopter 2050 Challenge

Winners of the 2nd (2012) Annual Helicopter 2050 Challenge

Here’s more about the winning design from the contest winners page on the Challenge website,

Ethan C., Age: 16; Idea: AH-9 Diamondback

The AH-9 Diamondback is a round shaped helicopter that utilizes the “Coanda” effect phenomena. A fan pushes the air down and out at high speed around the body creating a low pressure area around the top of the helicopter, which then creates an extra lift. Two turbofans power the aircraft and two stub wings under the cockpit enhance control and stability at high speed. A four-bladed rotor on top provides the main lift. The blades have symmetrical airfoil cross-sections, allowing for less drag. The aircraft uses carbon nanotubes resulting in a very light design, which reflects high fuel efficiency and improved load-carrying capacity. The design also includes a “med-vac” for evacuating wounded troops which includes space for a medic and two patients.

Chu won a $1000 scholarship prize and an all-expenses paid trip for two (he went with his father) to Sikorsky’s headquarters in Stratford, Connecticut.

Here’s a description of the company sponsoring the challenge from the About Sikorsky webpage,

Sikorsky Aircraft Corporation is a world leader in the design, manufacture and service of military and commercial helicopters; fixed-wing aircraft; spare parts and maintenance, repair and overhaul services for helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft; and civil helicopter operations.

A passion for aviation drove immigrant Igor Sikorsky to establish The Sikorsky Manufacturing Corporation in 1925 on Long Island, New York, and the company later became The Sikorsky Aviation Corporation. In 1929, Igor purchased land in Stratford, Connecticut, and the company became a subsidiary and later a division of United Aircraft Corporation, which evolved into United Technologies Corporation in 1975.

Today, Sikorsky Aircraft Corp. stays true to the legacy of Igor Sikorsky with a mission statement that encompasses his passion for safety and innovation: “We pioneer flight solutions that bring people home everywhere…every timeTM.” Sikorsky helicopters have saved an estimated 2 million lives since performing the world’s first helicopter rescue in 1944.

…

Sikorsky helicopters are used by all five branches of the United States armed forces, along with military services and commercial operators in 40 nations. Core U.S. military production programs are based on the Sikorsky H-60 aircraft: the BLACK HAWK helicopter for the U.S. Army and SEAHAWK® helicopter for the U.S. Navy. H-60 aircraft derivative aircraft perform multiple missions with other branches of the U.S. military. The CH-53E helicopter and MH-53E helicopter heavy-lift aircraft are flown by the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps to transport personnel and equipment, and in anti-mine warfare missions. Sikorsky is currently developing the next-generation CH-53K helicopter for the U.S. Marines.

…

Sikorsky has developed four generations of maritime helicopters including the proven SEAHAWK, SUPER STALLION™ and SEA KING™ helicopters that support the maritime operations of navies across the globe. Sikorsky has designed and built nearly half of all such helicopters currently serving with armed forces throughout the world.

BLACK HAWK helicopter variants are serving with 25 governments worldwide: Argentina, Australia, Austria, Bahrain, Brazil, Brunei, Chile, Colombia, Egypt, Greece, Israel, Japan, Jordan, Malaysia, Mexico, Morocco, People’s Republic of China, the Philippines, Republic of Korea, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey and the U.S.

…

By Kids For Kids Co., also mentioned in the news item as one of the sponsors for the 2050 Helicopter Challenge, is an ‘Educational and Family Marketing Company’ and “[it] provides innovative and integrated in-school marketing programs to help clients meet corporate social responsibility goals” according to the descriptor provided by the Yahoo search engine (http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=by+kids+for+kids&ei=UTF-8&fr=moz35).

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Canada’s York University and India’s Defence Research and Development Organisation

Tuesday, November 13th, 2012

York University (Ontario, Canada) has signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with India’s Defence Research and Development Organisation according to a Nov. 10, 2012 article in The Hindu Business Line,

The agreement will facilitate the two partners to pursue collaborative defence research in the areas of advanced materials, nanotechnology, life sciences, bio-informatics, chemical and biological defence, sensors, and others. Both sides have planned a number of joint projects in the time to come.

The Scientific Adviser to the Defence Minister and Chief of the Defence Organisation, V.K. Saraswat, and Robert Haché, Vice-President Research & Innovation, York University, signed the pact during the visit of the Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper in New Delhi.

Elsewhere in the article, York University is described as a research centre for Canada’s Dept. of National Defence specializing in chemical and biological defence, counter-terrorism, and something called ‘soldier as a system’ (I believe it has something to do with wearable computing).  Interestingly, I haven’t found any information about this MOU on the York University website or a federal government website. As well, I wasn’t able to find any information about York University’s DRDC research centre status and/or its defence research specialties. All of the information I’ve found has been on Indian news websites.

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“It is more important to have beauty in one’s equations than to have them fit experiment” and nano protection against nerve agents

Wednesday, November 7th, 2012

Michael Berger’s Nov. 7, 2012 Nanowerk Spotlight article about nanoporous adsorbents and protection against toxic nerve agents features Dr. Piotr Kowalczyk, a Senior Research Fellow at the Nanochemistry Research Institute at Curtin University of Technology in Australia, quoting English theoretical physicist, Paul Dirac,

“Some of my colleagues asked me if I believe in our theoretical results” says Kowalczyk. “The great physicist Paul Dirac used to say: ‘This result is too beautiful to be false; it is more important to have beauty in one’s equations than to have them fit experiment’.”

“And I truly believe that our theoretical results have to be correct – within the assumed model of nanopores – because they are so simple and beautiful” he concludes.

Kowalczyk is discussing some of  his latest work on protection against toxic nerve agents (Note: I have removed a link),

In a paper published in the October 31, 2012 online edition of Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics (“Screening of Carbonaceous Nanoporous Materials for Capture of Nerve Agents”), an international team led by Kowalczyk and Alexander V Neimark, a professor at Rutgers University, together with scientists from the Physicochemistry of Carbon Materials Research Group at Nicolaus Copernicus University in Poland, is shedding new light on the selection of an optimal nanomaterial for capturing highly volatile nerve agents.

Berger’s article gives some context for this research,

Protection against nerve agents – such as tabun, sarin, soman, VX, and others – is a major terrorism concern of security experts. Nerve agents, which attack the nervous system of the human body, are clear and colorless or slightly colored liquids and may have no odor or a faint, sweetish smell. They evaporate at various rates and are denser than air. Current methods to detect nerve agents include surface acoustic wave sensors; conducting polymer arrays; vector machines; and the most simple: color change paper sensors. Most of these systems have have certain limitations including low sensitivity and slow response times.

You can find more detail about nanopores and toxic nerve agents in Berger’s article.

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Sensing at the zeptoscale

Thursday, August 30th, 2012

My favourite measurement is anything that’s prefixed by ‘zepto’. (Note: At 9:04 am PDT I edited my original lede sentence to correct an awkward construction.] I think it’s the ‘z’ (zed) that appeals to me so greatly. Happily for me, scientists at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IITM) have published “Selective Visual Detection of TNT at the Sub-Zeptomole Level” [behind a paywall] in the journal Angewandte Chemie.

Here’s more about the research from the Aug. 27, 2012 news item on Nanowerk,

… Indian scientists have now introduced a specific detection method for the explosive TNT that can be used to detect even a single molecule.

Thalappil Pradeep, Ammu Mathew, and P. R. Sajanlal at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras use an ingenious combination of micro- and nanostructures as sensors: gold mesoflowers, flower-shaped gold particles about 4 µm in size, act as supports for silver clusters, tiny clumps of exactly 15 silver atoms embedded in the protein bovine serum albumin. When irradiated with light of the right wavelength, the silver clusters luminesce, giving off red light. The gold of the mesoflower supports intensifies the fluorescence. Their unique shape is a particular advantage, because it is easy to unambiguously identify under an optical microscope, unlike spherical particles.

How low can you go? The visual detection of 2,4,6-trinitrotoluene and Hg2+ at the sub-zeptomole level is demonstrated. This was achieved using a hybrid material that allowed for the development of a single-particle, single-molecule detection technique, which may be the ultimate in ultra-trace sensitivity with selectivity. (Downloaded from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/anie.201203810/abstract)

There are more details and a larger version of the image at Nanowerk.

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