Monthly Archives: July 2012

Magical nanobots at University of Florida kill (almost) 100% of Hepatitis C virus—in the lab

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I’ve always preferred the term nanobots but the folks at the University of Florida are calling them nanorobots, from the July 16, 2012 news item on phys.org,

University of Florida researchers have moved a step closer to treating diseases on a cellular level by creating a tiny particle that can be programmed to shut down the genetic production line that cranks out disease-related proteins.

In laboratory tests, these newly created “nanorobots” all but eradicated hepatitis C virus infection. The programmable nature of the particle makes it potentially useful against diseases such as cancer and other viral infections.

The research effort, led by Y. Charles Cao, a UF associate professor of chemistry, and Dr. Chen Liu, a professor of pathology and endowed chair in gastrointestinal and liver research in the UF College of Medicine, is described online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The news item originated with a July 16, 2012 news release from the University of Florida which goes on to explain how the researchers succeeded,

The Holy Grail of nanotherapy is an agent so exquisitely selective that it enters only diseased cells, targets only the specified disease process within those cells and leaves healthy cells unharmed.

To demonstrate how this can work, Cao and colleagues, with funding from the National Institutes of Health, the Office of Naval Research and the UF [University of Florida] Research Opportunity Seed Fund, created and tested a particle that targets hepatitis C virus in the liver and prevents the virus from making copies of itself.

Hepatitis C infection causes liver inflammation, which can eventually lead to scarring and cirrhosis. The disease is transmitted via contact with infected blood, most commonly through injection drug use, needlestick injuries in medical settings, and birth to an infected mother. More than 3 million people in the United States are infected and about 17,000 new cases are diagnosed each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Patients can go many years without symptoms, which can include nausea, fatigue and abdominal discomfort.

Current hepatitis C treatments involve the use of drugs that attack the replication machinery of the virus. But the therapies are only partially effective, on average helping less than 50 percent of patients, according to studies published in The New England Journal of Medicine and other journals. Side effects vary widely from one medication to another, and can include flu-like symptoms, anemia and anxiety.

Cao and colleagues, including graduate student Soon Hye Yang and postdoctoral associates Zhongliang Wang, Hongyan Liu and Tie Wang, wanted to improve on the concept of interfering with the viral genetic material in a way that boosted therapy effectiveness and reduced side effects.

The particle they created can be tailored to match the genetic material of the desired target of attack, and to sneak into cells unnoticed by the body’s innate defense mechanisms.

Recognition of genetic material from potentially harmful sources is the basis of important treatments for a number of diseases, including cancer, that are linked to the production of detrimental proteins. It also has potential for use in detecting and destroying viruses used as bioweapons.

The new virus-destroyer, called a nanozyme, has a backbone of tiny gold particles and a surface with two main biological components. The first biological portion is a type of protein called an enzyme that can destroy the genetic recipe-carrier, called mRNA, for making the disease-related protein in question. The other component is a large molecule called a DNA oligonucleotide that recognizes the genetic material of the target to be destroyed and instructs its neighbor, the enzyme, to carry out the deed. By itself, the enzyme does not selectively attack hepatitis C, but the combo does the trick.

“They completely change their properties,” Cao said.

In laboratory tests, the treatment led to almost a 100 percent decrease in hepatitis C virus levels. In addition, it did not trigger the body’s defense mechanism, and that reduced the chance of side effects. Still, additional testing is needed to determine the safety of the approach. [emphases mine]

This treatment builds on some previous research,

The UF nanoparticle design takes inspiration from the Nobel prize-winning discovery of a process in the body in which one part of a two-component complex destroys the genetic instructions for manufacturing protein, and the other part serves to hold off the body’s immune system attacks. This complex controls many naturally occurring processes in the body, so drugs that imitate it have the potential to hijack the production of proteins needed for normal function. The UF-developed therapy tricks the body into accepting it as part of the normal processes, but does not interfere with those processes.

Since there’s no mention of human clinical trials, I’m guessing that we are at least 10 years from seeing this therapeutic agent on the market.

After drafting this post yesterday (July 17, 2012) and while waiting to post it today, I found Dexter Johnson’s July 17 2012 posting where he makes some important points about this research (Note: I have removed a link),

Of course, this is a long way from becoming a treatment anytime soon. A major caveat is that the use of nanotreatments for the targeting and destroying of abnormal cells like cancer cells is always problematic since those cells are “still us” as George Whitesides noted some time back.  It’s always a bit of a tricky business to make sure that nanoparticles are targeting those biological processes within us that we want stopped and not the ones we want to keep.

Dexter goes on to comment about using the terms ‘nanobots’ or ‘nano robots’; he’s less sanguine about it than I am.

Henri (Poincaré), Pablo (Picasso), and Albert (Einstein) walk into a bar

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The three (Poincaré, Einstein, and Picasso did not meet together) but I like to think  that if they had met, if would have been in a bar (anyone can think of a punchline to the beginning of that joke, please do let me know). On the 100th anniversary of Henri Poincaré’s death, Arthur I Miller has written an essay which he posted on July 17, 2012 on the Guardian Science blogs,

Today, 17 July 2012, is the centenary of the death of the great French polymath Henri Poincaré, once described as the “last of the universalists”. His achievements span mathematics (he set the basis for chaos theory), physics (his mathematical methods are still used in studying elementary particles), philosophy (his framework for exploring scientific theories is still controversial) and the psychology of creativity (he studied the workings of the unconscious).

Poincaré also acted as a surprising link between Einstein and Picasso, who were both inspired by his best-selling Science and Hypothesis, published in 1902.

Here’s the link between the three men,

Working as a patent clerk in Bern, Switzerland, Einstein was at the core of a study group, his “think tank”, one of whom described how Poincaré’s book had “held them spellbound”. In it Poincaré moves from an analysis of scientific theories to analysing perceptions to probing thought itself, transporting the reader in crystal-clear prose to the very frontiers of knowledge. …

But Einstein found Poincaré’s dependence on everyday experience and laboratory data too restricting. In spring 1905, he went one step further. The result was his theory of relativity.

Far from being a stereotypical scientist, Poincaré’s thinking was closer to that of an artist. Édouard Toulouse, a psychologist specialising in creativity, interviewed him in 1897 and wrote that Poincaré’s thought “was spontaneous, little conscious, more like dreaming than rational, seeming most suited to works of pure imagination”.

So it’s hardly surprising that Picasso too was inspired by his work. But how did he hear of him? Picasso had a “think tank”, of avant-garde literati who kept him up to date on the latest developments in science and technology.

Poincaré inspired some of Picasso’s work and a school of painting without ever meeting him, simultaneously inspiring Einstein’s theory of relativity, which Poincaré disagreed with.

I encourage you to read Miller’s essay in full and leave you with this final excerpt,

A highly cultured man, he [Poincaré] was director of l’Académie Française (the pre-eminent French literary academy), as well as President of l’Académie des Sciences, an extraordinary honour.

He once wrote: “It is only through science and art that civilisation is of value.” He straddled two worlds, inspiring both Einstein and Picasso and played a pivotal role in sparking the explosion of creativity in both art and science that set the tenor of the 20th century.

US Air Force takes baby steps toward shapeshifting materials

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When I see information about US military futuristic projects it’s usually from the US Army’s DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency).  Consequently, I was surprised to notice that this shapeshifting project is being funded by the US Air Force Office of Scientific Research according to the July 11, 2012 news item on phys.org,

An international research team has received a $2.9 million grant from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research to design nanomaterials whose internal structure changes shape in response to stimuli such as heat or light.

Each of these novel materials will be constructed from three types of components: inorganic nanoparticles with desired optical or electrical properties; peptides that bond to these nanoparticles; and special molecules called spacers, which sit between the peptides and bend in the presence of heat, light or other triggers.

When stimulated, the spacers will cause the arrangement of nanoparticles within the material to morph — a process that can lead to interesting and useful effects.

Shape-shifting materials of the kind the researchers are planning to create could have use in applications including color-changing sensors and plasmonic circuits that divert light in two directions.

The news item originated from a July 11, 2012 news release from the State University of New York (SUNY) at Buffalo,

The project is being led by Paras Prasad, SUNY Distinguished Professor in the University at Buffalo’s departments of chemistry, physics, electrical engineering and medicine, and executive director of UB’s Institute for Lasers, Photonics and Biophotonics (ILPB). …

Prasad’s fellow investigators include Aidong Zhang, professor and chair of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at UB; Mark T. Swihart, professor of chemical and biological engineering at UB and director of the UB 2020 Integrated Nanostructured Systems Strategic Strength; Tiffany R. Walsh, associate professor at the Institute for Frontier Materials at Deakin University in Australia; and Marc R. Knecht, associate professor of chemistry at the University of Miami.

The palette of parts the team will use to build the nanomaterials includes spacers of different sizes, along with seven types of nanoparticles — gold, silver, silica, iron-oxide, iron-platinum, cadmium-sulfide and zinc-sulfide.

To identify the combinations of components that will produce the most interesting materials, the scientists will use high-throughput experiments and data-mining techniques to screen and analyze the vast number of possible combinations of nanostructures, biomolecular linking elements (the peptides) and assembly conditions.

“One of our goals is to contribute to the fundamental understanding of how the spatial arrangement of nanoscale components in materials affects their optical, magnetic and plasmonic properties,” Prasad said. “The high-throughput techniques we are using were pioneered in the field of bioinformatics, but also have extraordinary promise in the exploration of advanced materials.”

Zhang said, “The computational capabilities offered by informatics and data mining will enable us to maximize the value of our data regarding the nanoassemblies, to generate and to construct new assemblies that span a wide range of inorganic and bimolecular components so as to achieve desired combinatorics-based properties.”

It’s not exactly the shapeshifting one sees in science fiction but this will be the real stuff (not to be confused with The Right Stuff, a 1983 movie about the US space travel programme of the late 1950s to 1960s).

New paradigm for low power telecommunications

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I’m always a sucker for the nonlinear although I’m much more familiar with nonlinear narratives than I am with nonlinear photonics. From the July 15, 2012 news item on EurekAlert,

New research by Columbia Engineering demonstrates remarkable optical nonlinear behavior of graphene that may lead to broad applications in optical interconnects and low-power photonic integrated circuits. With the placement of a sheet of graphene just one-carbon-atom-thick, the researchers transformed the originally passive device into an active one that generated microwave photonic signals and performed parametric wavelength conversion at telecommunication wavelengths.

“We have been able to demonstrate and explain the strong nonlinear response from graphene, which is the key component in this new hybrid device,” says Tingyi Gu, the study’s lead author and a Ph.D. candidate in electrical engineering. “Showing the power-efficiency of this graphene-silicon hybrid photonic chip is an important step forward in building all-optical processing elements that are essential to faster, more efficient, modern telecommunications. And it was really exciting to explore the ‘magic’ of graphene’s amazingly conductive properties and see how graphene can boost optical nonlinearity, a property required for the digital on/off two-state switching and memory.”

Here’s one of the issues that scientists have been grappling with,

Until recently, researchers could only isolate graphene as single crystals with micron-scale dimensions, essentially limiting the material to studies confined within laboratories. “The ability to synthesize large-area films of graphene has the obvious implication of enabling commercial production of these proven graphene-based technologies,” explains James Hone, associate professor of mechanical engineering, whose team provided the high quality graphene for this study. “But large-area films of graphene can also enable the development of novel devices and fundamental scientific studies requiring graphene samples with large dimensions. This work is an exciting example of both—large-area films of graphene enable the fabrication of novel opto-electronic devices, which in turn allow for the study of scientific phenomena.”

Building on the work done by scientists such as Hone,this new group of researchers led by by Chee Wei Wong, professor of mechanical engineering, director of the Center for Integrated Science and Engineering, and Solid-State Science and Engineering at Columbia University, created a new device,

They have engineered a graphene-silicon device whose optical nonlinearity enables the system parameters (such as transmittance and wavelength conversion) to change with the input power level. The researchers also were able to observe that, by optically driving the electronic and thermal response in the silicon chip, they could generate a radio frequency carrier on top of the transmitted laser beam and control its modulation with the laser intensity and color. Using different optical frequencies to tune the radio frequency, they found that the graphene-silicon hybrid chip achieved radio frequency generation with a resonant quality factor more than 50 times lower than what other scientists have achieved in silicon.

“We are excited to have observed four-wave mixing in these graphene-silicon photonic crystal nanocavities,” says Wong. “We generated new optical frequencies through nonlinear mixing of two electromagnetic fields at low operating energies, allowing reduced energy per information bit. This allows the hybrid silicon structure to serve as a platform for all-optical data processing with a compact footprint in dense photonic circuits.”

That bit about the system parameters changing with input levels suggests a biological system responding sensitively to environmental inputs, e.g., when it gets hot, your body tries to cool itself down in a sensitive response to an input. Of course, that fanciful analogy doesn’t extend itself too far since the human body is trying to return to its internal balance point (homeostasis) which isn’t what the Columbia researchers are attempting to do with their device.

Bike-geocaching in Edmonton’s (Alberta, Canada) River Valley

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An adventure science blog for families is the best way I have of describing, The Rocket Scientists; Science, Engineering and Mathematics for Curious Minds of All Ages, a new (to me) Canadian science blog from people based in Edmonton, Alberta (Canada).

The Rocket Scientists’  July 13, 2012 posting features a bike=geocaching adventure in Edmonton’s River Valley. First, here’s a bit about the park, from the River Valley webpage on the City of Edmonton’s website,

At 7,400 hectares, Edmonton’s North Saskatchewan River valley is the largest stretch of urban parkland in North America. There are 22 major parks and over 150 kilometres of trails on which you can enjoy walks, bike rides, picnics, snowshoeing, cross-country skiing and more.

From the July 13, 2012 posting, here’s the proposed bike-geocaching adventure,

The Rocket Scientists are looking for a few brave explorers to join us on a bike-geocaching palooza in the River Valley. The key mission for the geocaching fellowship will be to locate at least 10 geocaches before sun set, thus breaking our previous record. As always, should any member of the team be bitten by moquitoes or OD on chocolate bars, The Rocket Scientists will disavow all knowledge of the mosquito and the chocolate bars.

…

All participants are required to bring their own bike, helmet, bug spray, sun block, water, lunch, snacks and small non-edible trinkets to trade (if they wish to trade) and a parent. Long pants are advisable as we will likely be doing a fair bit of bushwhacking and crawling around in the underbrush. The Rocket Scientists will provide the GPS and the geocache coordinates.

Sadly the event scheduled for Sat., July 14, 2012, and Sunday, July 15, 2012, had to be cancelled due to rain. (In Edmonton? squeaks a Vancouverite) On a cheerier note, this means that you can join the adventure when they reschedule, assuming you are in Edmonton when it takes place.

Here’s a little more about the bloggers, from the About us webpage,

The Rocket Scientists is a group of kids and adults in the Edmonton area dedicated to the experiential exploration of science, mathematics, and engineering. Our aim is to nurture science literacy by inspiring curious minds of all ages to explore the amazing world of basic and applied science.

Do we only do rocket science?
We conduct experiential research in a wide range of fields, from kitchen counter chemistry, kitchen table dissections, sidewalk astronomy, inventing and engineering contraptions, basement biology involving experiments with animals and, yes, we also build, launch and crash the occasional rocket. We also do more outdoorsy explorations, e.g. geocaching, hiking, birding, fossil and meteorite hunting, entomology, and mountaineering.

About this blog
The aim of this site is to document our experiments and adventures and in doing so (hopefully) inspire others to explore the amazing world of science as well. Our motto is: Science will blow your socks off. Resistance is futile.

Do we use animals in our research?
Some of our research involves the use of animals. Typically this means that our cat, Princess, will stand in as our model organism. Research involving living animals never harm our subjects, on the contrary they usually involve yummy treats, fun animal friendly activities, and lots of belly rubs. Research involving non-living animals always use the remains of organisms that already left the world of the living by the time we encountered them.

…

Really, who are we?

A mom, a dad, a cat, and a 6/7-year-old  + friend and family.

Help the European Commission understand nanoelectronics possibilities

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Cientifica, a leading consultancy on emerging and other technologies, is conducting an online survey on nanoelectronics (Key Digital Goods survey) in collaboration with the European Commission. From the July 16, 2012 Cientifica announcement,

 2020 Nanoelectronics

Help us to help the European Commission to understand our digital future.

In collaboration with the European Commission [EC] we are trying to determine which key digital goods based on nanoelectronics will be important in the future.

While the EC takes advice from various expert groups involved in industry and research, we want to know what you, the end-users think.

The Key Digital Goods survey can be found here.

BTW, I notice that 2020 Nanoelectronics echoes name for the new European Commission science funding programme, 2020 Horizon, which comes online next year (2013) as the current one, Framework Programme 7, is being phased out now. For anyone curious about Cientifica, I have an interview with the company’s Chief Executive Officer, Tim Harper, in my July 15, 2011 posting about his company’s report on nanotechnology and global funding.

2012 SANOFI BioGENEius Canada followup: Janelle Tam and CelluForce

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Janelle Tam (high school student mentioned in my May 11, 2012 posting) was welcomed by CelluForce, the joint FPInnovation/Domtar company in Windsor, Québec, so she could demonstrate some of her nanocrystalline cellulose (NCC) research. Caroline Bouchard in a July 11, 2012 article for La Presse/La Tribune provides more information about the research and when any potential products might be created (Frrench language excerpt, I will attempt a translation),

Janelle Tam, une jeune Ontarienne de 17 ans, a découvert une substance bénéfique pour la santé à base de nanocellulose cristalline (NCC) telle que produite à l’usine Celluforce de Windsor.

Couplée chimiquement à des particules de carbone, la NCC, une substance extraite de la fibre du bois, serait un puissant agent antivieillissement et un antioxydant supérieur aux vitamines C et E.

Sans être considérée comme une véritable fontaine de jouvence, cette découverte s’avère prometteuse pour améliorer les produits de santé et anti-âge, des applications que Celluforce pourrait exploiter d’ici trois à cinq ans.

Translation here we go: Tam discovered a new substance, based on NCC, which is extracted from wood and produced by the CelluForce plant in Windsor, with anti-aging properties and  superior anti-oxidant properties to vitamins C & E. The NCC is combined with carbon nanoparticles (specifically buckminster fullerenes). CelluForce may be able to exploit this health/beauty application in the next three to five years.

The CelluForce folks were so excited about Tam & her work they presented her with a plaque when she visited their plant on July 9, 2012,

Janelle Tam and Dr. Richard Berry, Vice President, Chief Technology Officer at CelluForce (courtesy: CelluForce)

Tam’s research opens a new opportunity for NCC research which, in Canada, has mainly focussed on textiles, composites, and coatings. Here’s Tam describing her work (from the Bouchard article),

«Les antioxydants préviennent et traitent des maladies. Ils peuvent aussi être utilisés dans la conservation des aliments et dans les produits anti-âge. Certains antioxydants sont toutefois toxiques, ou encore, ne sont pas solubles dans l’eau. Par exemple, les vitamines C et E se dégradent, alors quand elles sont présentes dans un produit cosmétique, leur effet diminue avec le temps. La NCC est naturelle, non toxique, soluble et stable. Elle peut aussi réagir à la température ou au pH», explique Janelle Tam, originaire de Singapour et étudiante de 12e année au Waterloo Collegiate Institute.

Rough (very) translation: Antioxidants can prevent and treat illness. They can also be used for food preservation and anti-aging. Some antioxidants are toxic and/or insoluble in water. For example, vitamins C & E degrade so when they’re present in a cosmetic the effect tapers off over time. NCC is natural, nontoxic, soluble, and stable. It also reacts to temperature or pH levels,  explains Tam originally from Singapore and a student in grade 12 at Waterloo Collegiate Institute.

As the 2012 winner of the Sanofi BioGENEius Challenge Canada competition, Tam was invited to compete in this year’s international Sanofi BioGENEisu Challenge held in Boston, Massachusetts on June 19, 2012. Tam received an honourable mention for her work while Rui Song of Saskatoon placed third internationally. From the Sanofi BioGENEius Challenge Canada website,

A 16-year-old Saskatchewan girl with a goal of improving world health by engineering a more nutritious variety of lentil was among the top prize winners Tuesday June 19 at an international science competition for elite high school students.

Rui Song, a Grade 11 student at Saskatoon’s Walter Murray Collegiate, was awarded the $2,500 third place prize at this year’s International BioGENEius Challenge, conducted at the annual global BIO conference in Boston.

Janelle Tam, a Grade 12 student at Waterloo Collegiate Institute in Ontario, was awarded a $500 prize and honourable mention for her project — the invention of a disease-fighting, anti-aging compound using nano-particles from trees.

Both girls had earned berths in the international competition last month in the Sanofi BioGENEius Challenge Canada with first (Janelle) and second place (Rui) finishes.

Congratulations to both Rui Song and Janelle Tam.

I interviewed Dr. Richard Berry in my Aug. 27, 2010 posting where he very kindly answered my questions about cellulose, the nano kind and otherwise.

One final thought, why doesn’t CelluForce stimulate more innovative research on NCC by running a contest modeled on this Sanofi BioGENEius competition? They could call it something like the ‘CelluForce Creativity Crunch’.

Cornell University (New York State, US) celebrates 35 years of nanotechnology research

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The festivities at Cornell University start on July 19, 2012 according to the July 9, 2012 news item by Anne Ju for the Cornell Chronicle,

Photonics, magnetics, biotechnology and energy are just a few areas in which the Cornell NanoScale Science and Technology Facility (CNF) has spent more than three decades connecting the brightest researchers with the best tools and expertise to make their scientific ideas real.

On July 19, CNF will celebrate its storied history of cutting-edge nanoscience research and discovery at its 35th anniversary and annual meeting.

…

Speakers will include Michal Lipson, professor of electrical and computer engineering, who will talk about manipulating light on a chip; and Jordan Katine, of Hitachi Global Storage Technologies and former Cornell postdoctoral associate, who will describe promising methods for making nanoscale magnetic devices.

The event’s keynote speaker will be William Brinkman, director of the Office of Science in the U.S. Department of Energy, who will address “Whither Nanoscience?”

…

Over the years, thanks in part to CNF, Cornell has helped “nanotechnology” become a household word: In 1997, a Cornell student used electron beam lithography to etch a red blood cell-sized guitar onto a silicon chip, a feat that garnered worldwide attention.

Cornell and CNF have stayed on the leading edge of nanoscale science. For example, in the last year, a low-pressure chemical vapor deposition machine for making graphene and carbon nanotubes was purchased through a grant, said Donald Tennant, CNF director of operations.

More than 700 researchers use CNF every year, and about half come from outside Cornell. A key goal of CNF is to have a low-overhead, open-access operating model and to level the playing field for researchers with limited resources, Tennant said.

You can find out more about the July 19, 2012 CNF event here. As for an opening address titled, Whither nanoscience? Doesn’t the word ‘whither’ give the address an old-fashioned flavour, something from the 19th century or perhaps from the bible (Whither thou goest, I will go [Ruth to Naomi])?

Meanwhile, on  July 20, 2012 there will be a special media briefing by Cornell and Stanford University (California) nanoscience researchers, from the July 13, 2012 news item on the Nanotechnology Now website,

On Friday, July 20, from 10 to 11 a.m. [EST], a special panel of nantechnology researchers will gather at Cornell University and explore the future of nanoscience during an interactive conversation with members of the media – both on site in Ithaca and online from anywhere in the world via WebEx technology.

Joining journalists for the discussion will be:

  • Juan Hinestroza, an associate professor fiber science, directs the Textiles Nanotechnology Laboratory at Cornell’s College of Human Ecology. His research on understanding fundamental phenomena at the nanoscale that are relevant to fiber and polymer science, has led to breakthrough “multifunctional fibers” that can hold or change color, conduct and sense micro-electrical currents, and selectively filter toxic gasses.
  •  ….

Media members are invited to take part, in person or online. To do so, please RSVP to John Carberry in Cornell’s Press Relations Office at 607-255-5353 or johncarberry@cornell.edu.

I last mentioned Juan Hinestroza in connection with work done by his students at Cornell University with textiles that give protection from malaria in a May 15, 2012 posting.

DAVinCI lets Rice University researchers visualize their data big time

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The July 13, 2012 news item on physorg.com presents an extraordinary picture (Note: I have removed a link),

The 200-inch wall (measured diagonally) lets users display and analyze images of all types, from atoms to galaxies. This studio is expected to help researchers in Earth science, biomedicine, engineering, art, architecture and other fields gain extraordinarily clear pictures of their data sets, be they bacteria or bridges.

“I can take my 3-D seismic images,  project them here and walk around inside them,” said Alan Levander, Rice’s Carey Croneis Professor of Earth Science and principal investigator of the Data Analysis and Visualization Cyberinfrastructure (DAVinCI) project. “With a tracking device in my hand, I can go through and choose the features that I want to look at.” The DAVinCI project adds to Rice’s extensive supercomputing resources, which also include Blue Gene/P, among the 500 most powerful supercomputers in the United States.

The news item originated in a July 12, 2012 Rice University news release by Mike Williams,

The futuristic wall of 50-inch high-resolution projection monitors supports two- and three-dimensional visualization needs at extremely high resolution and clarity, Odegard [Jan Odegard, executive director of Rice’s Ken Kennedy Institute for Information Technology] said. Backed by custom graphics engines, the wall allows data to be displayed in three dimensions using modern active stereo shutter glasses, often seen in home 3-D TV systems but far more sophisticated than glasses used at a 3-D movie theater.

The shutters are linked wirelessly to the graphic engines so that, in effect, only one eye is open at a time, and it matches the left or right images displayed on the screen. But this all happens very fast, at a frame rate of 120 times a second, so users see no flicker in their images.

Erik Engquist, manager of the lab who joined Rice last year, has been demonstrating the system with geological, molecular and other 3-D data that float in front of the screen and allow viewers to see details that might be invisible on flat images, no matter how big. The system has two other advantages over standard 3-D displays. The 32-megapixel screen can track researchers with an infrared system (also tied into the glasses) and allows them to walk around inside an image. Researchers can also interact with the data by turning them this way and that in midair to get a different perspective and interpret the data quantitatively.

“If you have a 10-dimensional data space — which is not uncommon — you can’t visualize it in 10 dimensions, but you can visualize any three at a time,” Levander said. “You can walk through complicated multidimensional space looking at what are called ‘hypercubes.’ You can interact with them and look for correlations in complex systems.”

Engquist, an applied mathematician, said the 16 projection monitors were chosen for their display brilliance and their narrow borders that leave only a thin strip of black between individual screens. “It’s far less intrusive than if we had used regular TV monitors, which have a large bezel,” he said. “If the images have a black background, you barely see the lines; in fact, after a while you don’t really notice them, since your focus will be on the data.”

Here’s a video about DAVinCI produced by Rice University,

The official opening for this project is Sept. 5, 2012 but researchers are already working with this new equipment (or playing with a fabulous new toy which brings to mind the Star Trek holodeck). Rice University has made an online technical manual, Getting Started on DAVinCI available. You need to be familiar with the Linux operating system and comfortable with writing short scripts (i.e., have rudimentary programming skills).

 

Strawberries, silver nanoparticles, and whipped cream

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You can hold the whipped cream and strawberries (save them for a dessert) as you process silver nanoparticles using strawberry tree leaves in an environmentally friendly fashion. From the July 11, 2012 news release on EurekAlert,

Strawberry tree leaf (Arbutus unedo) and silver nitrate (AgNO3). With just these two ingredients scientists can now produce silver nanoparticles, a material that is used in advanced technologies from compounds for distributing medicines through to electronic devices, catalysts, contaminant solvents.

The technique has been developed by scientists at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (Greece) and Madrid’s Carlos III University (UC3M) and consists of adding an extract of the leaf to a silver nitrate aqueous solution. Silver nanoparticles form immediately after stirring the mixture for some minutes.

“There are other methods for producing them but this process is the most simple, low cost and easy to implement given that a non-toxic plant is used at a temperature of between 25ºC and 80ºC”, outlines Sophia Tsipas, UC3M researcher and coauthor of the study, which is published on the Materials Letters journal.

Tsipas offers more details about the ability to control particle size and geometry,

Tsipas adds that “the innovation of this method lies in the fact that it allows us to control the parameters for obtaining nanoparticles of a known size (from 5 to 40 nm) and geometry (spheres, pyramids, cubes). The nanoparticles produced remained stable over long periods of time of up to 6 months.”

Strawberry tree leaves facilitate such stability as they form an organic layer of various nanometres around the silver particles. What is more, the extract acts as a reducing agent and stabilizer for the entire product.

The nanoparticles obtained have been characterised and verified with various techniques (transmission electron microscopy, ultraviolet spectroscopy and FTIR). As well as optimising the process, the team is currently studying how to produce similar nanometric sized particles with other metals like gold and copper.

The study has been published,

Pantelis Kouvaris, Andreas Delimitis, Vassilis Zaspalis, Dimitrios Papadopoulos, Sofia A. Tsipas, Nikolaos Michailidis. “Green synthesis and characterization of silver nanoparticles produced using Arbutus Unedo leaf extract”. Materials Letters 76: 18, June 2012. Doi:10.1016/j.matlet.2012.02.025.

For those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, happy summer weekend! We are enjoying strawberry season here in BC, Canada.