Not long after announcing their new work on cartilage and ‘dancing molecules’, Samuel I. Stupp and his team at Northwestern University (Chicago, Illinois) have announced work with a new material that does not have dancing molecules in a study using animal models. It’s here in an August 5, 02024 Northwestern University news release (also on EurekAlert and on SciTechDaily and received by email) by Amanda Morris, Note: Links have been removed,
Northwestern University scientists have developed a new bioactive material that successfully regenerated high-quality cartilage in the knee joints of a large-animal model.
Although it looks like a rubbery goo, the material is actually a complex network of molecular components, which work together to mimic cartilage’s natural environment in the body.
In the new study, the researchers applied the material to damaged cartilage in the animals’ knee joints. Within just six months, the researchers observed evidence of enhanced repair, including the growth of new cartilage containing the natural biopolymers (collagen II and proteoglycans), which enable pain-free mechanical resilience in joints.
With more work, the researchers say the new material someday could potentially be used to prevent full knee replacement surgeries, treat degenerative diseases like osteoarthritis and repair sports-related injuries like ACL [anterior cruciate ligament] tears.
The study will be published during the week of August 5 [2024] in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“Cartilage is a critical component in our joints,” said Northwestern’s Samuel I. Stupp, who led the study. “When cartilage becomes damaged or breaks down over time, it can have a great impact on people’s overall health and mobility. The problem is that, in adult humans, cartilage does not have an inherent ability to heal. Our new therapy can induce repair in a tissue that does not naturally regenerate. We think our treatment could help address a serious, unmet clinical need.”
A pioneer of regenerative nanomedicine, Stupp is Board of Trustees Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, Chemistry, Medicine and Biomedical Engineering at Northwestern, where he is founding director of the Simpson Querrey Institute for BioNanotechnology and its affiliated center, the Center for Regenerative Nanomedicine. Stupp has appointments in the McCormick School of Engineering, Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences and Feinberg School of Medicine. Jacob Lewis, a former Ph.D. student in Stupp’s laboratory, is the paper’s first author.
What’s in the material?
The new study follows recently published work from the Stupp laboratory, in which the team used “dancing molecules” to activate human cartilage cells to boost the production of proteins that build the tissue matrix. Instead of using dancing molecules, the new study evaluates a hybrid biomaterial also developed in Stupp’s lab. The new biomaterial comprises two components: a bioactive peptide that binds to transforming growth factor beta-1 (TGFb-1) — an essential protein for cartilage growth and maintenance — and modified hyaluronic acid, a natural polysaccharide present in cartilage and the lubricating synovial fluid in joints.
“Many people are familiar with hyaluronic acid because it’s a popular ingredient in skincare products,” Stupp said. “It’s also naturally found in many tissues throughout the human body, including the joints and brain. We chose it because it resembles the natural polymers found in cartilage.”
Stupp’s team integrated the bioactive peptide and chemically modified hyaluronic acid particles to drive the self-organization of nanoscale fibers into bundles that mimic the natural architecture of cartilage. The goal was to create an attractive scaffold for the body’s own cells to regenerate cartilage tissue. Using bioactive signals in the nanoscale fibers, the material encourages cartilage repair by the cells, which populate the scaffold.
Clinically relevant to humans
To evaluate the material’s effectiveness in promoting cartilage growth, the researchers tested it in sheep with cartilage defects in the stifle joint, a complex joint in the hind limbs similar to the human knee. This work was carried out in the laboratory of Mark Markel in the School of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
According to Stupp, testing in a sheep model was vital. Much like humans, sheep cartilage is stubborn and incredibly difficult to regenerate. Sheep stifles and human knees also have similarities in weight bearing, size and mechanical loads.
“A study on a sheep model is more predictive of how the treatment will work in humans,” Stupp said. “In other smaller animals, cartilage regeneration occurs much more readily.”
In the study, researchers injected the thick, paste-like material into cartilage defects, where it transformed into a rubbery matrix. Not only did new cartilage grow to fill the defect as the scaffold degraded, but the repaired tissue was consistently higher quality compared to the control.
A lasting solution
In the future, Stupp imagines the new material could be applied to joints during open-joint or arthroscopic surgeries. The current standard of care is microfracture surgery, during which surgeons create tiny fractures in the underlying bone to induce new cartilage growth.
“The main issue with the microfracture approach is that it often results in the formation of fibrocartilage — the same cartilage in our ears — as opposed to hyaline cartilage, which is the one we need to have functional joints,” Stupp said. “By regenerating hyaline cartilage, our approach should be more resistant to wear and tear, fixing the problem of poor mobility and joint pain for the long term while also avoiding the need for joint reconstruction with large pieces of hardware.”
The study, “A bioactive supramolecular and covalent polymer scaffold for cartilage repair in a sheep model,” was supported by the Mike and Mary Sue Shannon Family Fund for Bio-Inspired and Bioactive Materials Systems for Musculoskeletal Regeneration.
Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,
A bioactive supramolecular and covalent polymer scaffold for cartilage repair in a sheep model by Jacob A. Lewis, Brett Nemke, Yan Lu, Nicholas A. Sather, Mark T. McClendon, Michael Mullen, Shelby C. Yuan, Sudheer K. Ravuri, Jason A. Bleedorn, Marc J. Philippon, Johnny Huard, Mark D. Markel, and Samuel I. Stupp. Proceedings ot the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) 121 (33) e2405454121 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2405454121 August 6, 2024
It seems that physicists are having a moment in the pop culture scene and they are excited about two television series (Fallout and 3 Body Problem) televised earlier this year in US/Canada.
The world ends on Oct. 23, 2077, in a series of radioactive explosions—at least in the world of “Fallout,” a post-apocalyptic video game series that has now been adapted into a blockbuster TV show on Amazon’s Prime Video.
The literal fallout that ensues creates a post-apocalyptic United States that is full of mutated monstrosities, irradiated humans called ghouls and hard scrabble survivors who are caught in the middle of it all. It’s the material of classic Atomic Age sci-fi, the kind of pulp stories “Fallout” draws inspiration from for its retro-futuristic version of America.
But there is more science in this science fiction story than you might think, according to Pran Nath, Matthews distinguished university professor of physics at Northeastern University.
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“Fallout” depicts a post-apocalyptic world centuries after nuclear war ravaged the United States. Amazon MGM Studios Photo
In the opening moments of “Fallout,” which debuted on April 10 [2024], Los Angeles is hit with a series of nuclear bombs. Although it takes place in a clearly fictional version of La La Land –– the robots and glistening, futuristic skyscrapers in the distance are dead giveaways –– the nuclear explosions themselves are shockingly realistic.
Nath says that when a nuclear device is dropped there are three stages.
“When the nuclear blast occurs, because of the chain reaction, in a very short period of time, a lot of energy and radiation is emitted,” Nath says. “In the first instance, a huge flash occurs, which is the nuclear reaction producing gamma rays. If you are exposed to it, people, for example, in Hiroshima were essentially evaporated, leaving shadows.”
Depending on how far someone is from the blast, even those who are partially protected will have their body rapidly heat up to 50 degrees Celsius, or 122 degrees Fahrenheit, causing severe burns. The scalded skin of the ghouls in “Fallout” are not entirely unheard of (although their centuries-long lifespan stretches things a bit).
The second phase is a shockwave and heat blast –– what Nath calls a “fireball.” The shockwave in the first scene of “Fallout” quickly spreads from the blast, but Nath says it would probably happen even faster and less cinematically. It would travel around the speed of sound, around 760 miles per hour.
The shockwave also has a huge amount of pressure, “so huge … that it can collapse concrete buildings.” It’s followed by a “fireball” that would burn every building in the blast area with an intense heatwave.
“The blast area is defined as the area where the shockwaves and the fireball are the most intense,” Nath says. “For Hiroshima, that was between 1 and 2 miles. Basically, everything is destroyed in that blast area.”
The third phase of the nuclear blast is the fallout, which lasts for much longer and has even wider ranging impacts than the blast and shockwave. The nuclear blast creates a mushroom cloud, which can reach as high as 10 miles into the atmosphere. Carried by the wind, the cloud spreads radioactivity far outside the blast area.
“In a nuclear blast, up to 100 different radioactive elements are produced,” Nath says. “These radioactive elements have lifetimes which could be a few seconds, and they could be up to millions of years. … It causes pollution and damage to the body and injuries over a longer period, causing cancer and leukemia, things like this.”
A key part of the world of “Fallout” is the Vaults, massive underground bunkers the size of small towns that the luckiest of people get to retreat into when the world ends. The Vaults are several steps above most real-world fallout shelters, but Nath says that kind of protection would be necessary if you wanted to stay safe from the kind of radiation released by nuclear weapons, particularly gamma rays that can penetrate several feet of concrete.
“If you are further away and you keep inside and behind concrete, then you can avoid both the initial flash of the nuclear blast and also could probably withstand the shockwaves and the heatwave that follows, so the survivability becomes larger,” Nath says.
But what about all the radioactive mutants wandering around the post-apocalyptic wasteland?
It might seem like the colossal, monstrous mutant salamanders and giant cockroaches of “Fallout” are a science fiction fabrication. But there is a real-world basis for this, Nath says.
“There are various kinds of abnormalities that occur [with radiation,]” Nath says. “They can also be genetic. Radiation can create mutations, which are similar to spontaneous mutation, in animals and humans. In Chernobyl, for example, they are discovering animals which are mutated.”
In the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, the genetics of wild dogs have been radically altered. Scientists hypothesize that thewolves near Chernobyl may have developed to be more resistant to radiation, which could make them “cancer resistant,” or at least less impacted by cancer. And frogs have adapted to have more melanin in their bodies, a form of protection against radiation, turning them black.
“Fallout” takes the horrifying reality of nuclear war and spins a darkly comic sci-fi yarn, but Nath says it’s important to remember how devastating these real-world forces are.
It’s estimated that as many as 146,000 people in Hiroshima and 80,000 people in Nagasaki were killed by the effects of the bombs dropped by the U.S. Today’s nuclear weapons are so much more powerful that there is very little understanding of the impact these weapons could have. Nath says the fallout could even exacerbate global warming.
“Thermonuclear war would be a global problem,” Nath says.
Although “Fallout” is a piece of science fiction, the reality of its world-ending scenario is terrifyingly real, says Pran Nath, Matthews distinguished university professor of physics at Northeastern University. Photo by Adam Glanzman/Northeastern University
Kudos to the photographer!
3 Body Problem (television series)
This one seems to have a lit a fire in the breasts of physicists everywhere. I have a number of written pieces and a video about this this show, which is based on a book by Liu Cixn. (You can find out more about Cixin and his work in his Wikipedia entry.)
“3 Body Problem,” Netflix’s new big-budget adaptation of Liu Cixin’s book series helmed by the creators behind “Game of Thrones,” puts the science in science fiction.
The series focuses on scientists as they attempt to solve a mystery that spans decades, continents and even galaxies. That means “3 Body Problem” throws some pretty complicated quantum mechanics and astrophysics concepts at the audience as it, sometimes literally, tries to bring these ideas down to earth.
However, at the core of the series is the three-body problem, a question that has stumped scientists for centuries.
What exactly is the three-body problem, and why is it still unsolvable? Jonathan Blazek, an assistant professor of physics at Northeastern University, explains that systems with two objects exerting gravitational force on one another, whether they’re particles or stars and planets, are predictable. Scientists have been able to solve this two-body problem and predict the orbits of objects since the days of Isaac Newton. But as soon as a third body enters the mix, the whole system gets thrown into chaos.
“The three-body problem is the statement that if you have three bodies gravitating toward each other under Newton’s law of gravitation, there is no general closed-form solution for that situation,” Blazek says. “Little differences get amplified and can lead to wildly unpredictable behavior in the future.”
In “3 Body Problem,” like in Cixin’s book, this is a reality for aliens that live in a solar system with three suns. Since all three stars are exerting gravitational forces on each other, they end up throwing the solar system into chaos as they fling each other back and forth. For the Trisolarans, the name for these aliens, it means that when a sun is jettisoned far away, their planet freezes, and when a sun is thrown extremely close to their planet, it gets torched. Worse, because of the three-body problem, these movements are completely unpredictable.
For centuries, scientists have pondered the question of how to determine a stable starting point for three gravitational bodies that would result in predictable orbits. There is still no generalizable solution that can be taken out of theory and modeled in reality, although recently scientists have started to find some potentially creative solutions, including with models based on the movements of drunk people.
“If you want to [predict] what the solar system’s going to do, we can put all the planets and as many asteroids as we know into a computer code and basically say we’re going to calculate the force between everything and move everything forward a little bit,” Blazek says. “This works, but to the extent that you’re making some approximations … all of these things will eventually break down and your prediction is going to become inaccurate.”
Blazek says the three-body problem has captivated scientific minds because it’s a seemingly simple problem. Most high school physics students learn Newton’s law of gravity and can reasonably calculate and predict the movement of two bodies.
Three-body systems, and more than three-body systems, also show up throughout the universe, so the question is incredibly relevant. Look no further than our solar system.
The relationship between the sun, Earth and our moon is a three-body system. But Blazek says since the sun exerts a stronger gravitational force on Earth and Earth does the same on the moon, it creates a pair of two-body systems with stable, predictable orbits –– for now.
Blazek says that although our solar system appears stable, there’s no guarantee that it will stay that way in the far future because there are still multi-body systems at play. Small changes like an asteroid hitting one of Jupiter’s moons and altering its orbit ever so slightly could eventually spiral into larger changes.
That doesn’t mean humanity will face a crisis like the one the Trisolarans face in “3 Body Problem.” These changes happen extremely slowly, but Blazek says it’s another reminder of why these concepts are interesting and important to think about in both science and science fiction.
“I don’t think anything is going to happen on the time scale of our week or even probably our species –– we have bigger problems than the instability of orbits in our solar system,” Blazek says. “But, that said, if you think about billions of years, during that period we don’t know that the orbits will stay as they currently are. There’s a good chance there will be some instability that changes how things look in the solar system.”
An April 12, 2024 news item on phys.org covers some of the same ground, Note: A link has been removed.
The science fiction television series 3 Body Problem, the latest from the creators of HBO’s Game of Thrones, has become the most watched show on Netflix since its debut last month. Based on the bestselling book trilogy Remembrance of Earth’s Past by Chinese computer engineer and author Cixin Liu, 3 Body Problem introduces viewers to advanced concepts in physics in service to a suspenseful story involving investigative police work, international intrigue, and the looming threat of an extraterrestrial invasion.
Yet how closely does the story of 3 Body Problem adhere to the science that it’s based on? The very name of the show comes from the three-body problem, a mathematical problem in physics long considered to be unsolvable.
Virginia Tech physicist Djordje Minic says, “The three-body problem is a very famous problem in classical and celestial mechanics, which goes back to Isaac Newton. It involves three celestial bodies interacting via the gravitational force—that is, Newton’s law of gravity. Unlike mathematical predictions of the motions of two-body systems, such as Earth-moon or Earth-sun, the three-body problem does not have an analytic solution.”
“At the end of the 19th century, the great French mathematician Henri Poincaré’s work on the three-body problem gave birth to what is known as chaos theory and the concept of the ‘butterfly effect.'”
Both the novels and the Netflix show contain a visualization of the three-body problem in action: a solar system made up of three suns in erratic orbit around one another. Virginia Tech aerospace engineer and mathematics expert Shane Ross discussed liberties the story takes with the science that informs it.
“There are no known configurations of three massive stars that could maintain an erratic orbit,” Ross said. “There was a big breakthrough about 20 years ago when a figure eight solution of the three-body problem was discovered, in which three equal-sized stars chase each other around on a figure eight-shaped course. In fact, Cixin Liu makes reference to this in his books. Building on that development, other mathematicians found other solutions, but in each case the movement is not chaotic.”
Ross elaborated, “It’s even more unlikely that a fourth body, a planet, would be in orbit around this system of three stars, however erratically — it would either collide with one or be ejected from the system. The situation in the book would therefore be a solution of the ‘four-body problem,’ which I guess didn’t have quite the right ring to use as a title.
“Furthermore, a stable climate is unlikely even on an Earth-like planet. At last count, there are at least a hundred independent factors that are required to create an Earth-like planet that supports life as we know it,” Ross said. “We have been fortunate to have had about 10,000 years of the most stable climate in Earth’s history, which makes us think climate stability is the norm, when in fact, it’s the exception. It’s likely no coincidence that this has corresponded with the rise of advanced human civilization.”
About Ross A professor of Aerospace and Ocean Engineering at Virginia Tech, Shane Ross directs the Ross Dynamics Lab, which specializes in mathematical modeling, simulation, visualization, and experiments involving oceanic and atmospheric patterns, aerodynamic gliding, orbital mechanics, and many other disciplines. He has made fundamental contributions toward finding chaotic solutions to the three-body problem. Read his bio …
About Minic Djordje Minic teaches physics at Virginia Tech. A specialist in string theory and quantum gravity, he has collaborated on award-winning research related to dark matter and dark energy. His most recent investigation involves the possibility that in the context of quantum gravity the geometry of quantum theory might be dynamical in analogy with the dynamical nature of spacetime geometry in Einstein’s theory of gravity. View his full bio …
For the last ‘3 Body Problem’ essay, there’s this April 5, 2023 article by Tara Bitran and Phillipe Thao for Netflix.com featuring comments from a physicist concerning a number of science questions,, Note: Links have been removed,
If you’ve raced through 3 Body Problem, the new series from Game of Thrones creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss and True Blood writer Alexander Woo, chances are you want to know more about everything from Sophons and nanofibers to what actually constitutes a three-body problem. After all, even the show’s scientists are stumped when they witness their well-known theories unravel at the seams.
But for physicists like 3 Body Problem’s Jin (Jess Hong) and real-life astrophysicist Dr. Becky Smethurst (who researches how supermassive black holes grow at the University of Oxford and explains how scientific phenomena work in viral videos), answering the universe’s questions is a problem they’re delighted to solve. In fact, it’s part of the fun. “I feel like scientists look at the term ‘problem’ more excitedly than anybody else does,” Smethurst tells Tudum. “Every scientist’s dream is to be told that they got it wrong before and here’s some new data that you can now work on that shows you something different where you can learn something new.”
The eight-episode series, based on writer Cixin Liu’s internationally celebrated Remembrance of Earth’s Past trilogy, repeatedly defies human science standards and forces the characters to head back to the drawing board to figure out how to face humanity’s greatest threat. Taking us on a mind-boggling journey that spans continents and timelines, the story begins in ’60s China, when a young woman makes a fateful decision that reverberates across space and time into the present day. With humanity’s future in danger, a group of tight-knit scientists, dubbed the Oxford Five, must work against time to save the world from catastrophic consequences.
Dr. Matt Kenzie, associate professor of physics at University of Cambridge and 3 Body Problem’s science advisor, sits down with Tudum to dive into the science behind the series. So if you can’t stop thinking about stars blinking and chaotic eras, keep reading for all the answers to your burning scientific questions. Education time!
What is a Cherenkov tank?
In Episode 1, the Oxford Five’s former college professor, Dr. Vera Ye (Vedette Lim), walks out onto a platform at the top of a large tank and plunges to her death in a shallow pool of water below. If you were wondering what that huge tank was, it’s called a particle detector (sometimes also known as a Cherenkov tank). It’s used to observe, measure, and identify particles, including, in this case, neutrinos, a common particle that comes largely from the sun. “Part of the reason that they’re kind of interesting is that we don’t really understand much about them, and we suspect that they could be giving us clues to other types of physics in the universe that we don’t yet understand,” Dr. Kenzie told Netflix.
When a neutrino interacts with the water molecules stored inside the tank, it sets off a series of photomultiplier tubes — the little circles that line the tank Vera jumps into. Because Vera’s experiment is shut down and the water is reduced to a shallow level, the fall ends up killing her.
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What are nanofibers?
In the show, Auggie’s a trailblazer in nanofiber technology. She runs a company that designs self-assembling synthetic polymer nanofibers and hopes to use her latest innovation to solve world problems, like poverty and disease. But what are nanofibers and how do they work? Dr. Kenzie describes nanofiber technology as “any material with a width of nanometers” — in other words, one millionth of a millimeter in thickness. Nanofibers can be constructed out of graphene (a one-atom thick layer of carbon) and are often very strong. “They can be very flexible,” he adds. “They tend to be very good conductors of both heat and electricity.”
Is nanofiber technology real, and can it actually cut through human flesh?
Nanofiber technology does exist, although Dr. Kenzie says it’s curated and grown in labs under very specific conditions. “One of the difficulties is how you hold them in place — the scaffolding it’s called,” he adds. “You have to design molecules which hold these things whilst you’re trying to build them.”
After being tested on a synthetic diamond cube in Episode 2, we see the real horrors of nanofiber technology when it’s used to slice through human bodies in Episode 5. Although the nanofiber technology that exists today is not as mass produced as Auggie’s — due to the cost of producing and containing it — Dr. Kenzie says it’s still strong enough to slice through almost anything.
What can nanofiber technology be used for?
According to Dr. Kenzie, the nanofiber technology being developed today can be used in several ways within the manufacturing and construction industries. “If you wanted a machine that could do some precision cutting, then maybe [nanofiber] would be good,” he says. “I know they’re also tested in the safety of the munitions world. If you need to bulletproof a room or bulletproof a vest, they’re incredibly light and they’re incredibly strong.” He also adds that nanofiber technology is viewed as a material of the future, which can be used for water filtration — just as we see Auggie use it in the season finale.
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The Bitran and Thao piece includes another description of the 3 Body Problem but it’s the first I’ve seen that describes some of the other science.
Also mentioned in one of the excerpts in this posting is The Science and Entertainment Exchange (also known as The Science & Entertainment Exchange or Science & Entertainment Exchange) according to its Wikipedia entry, Note: Links have been removed,
The Science & Entertainment Exchange[1] is a program run and developed by the United States National Academy of Sciences (NAS) to increase public awareness, knowledge, and understanding of science and advanced science technology through its representation in television, film, and other media. It serves as a pro-science movement with the main goal of re-cultivating how science and scientists truly are in order to rid the public of false perceptions on these topics. The Exchange provides entertainment industry professionals with access to credible and knowledgeable scientists and engineers who help to encourage and create effective representations of science and scientists in the media, whether it be on television, in films, plays, etc. The Exchange also helps the science community understand the needs and requirements of the entertainment industry, while making sure science is conveyed in a correct and positive manner to the target audience.
Officially launched in November 2008, the Exchange can be thought of as a partnership between NAS and Hollywood, as it arranges direct consultations between scientists and entertainment professionals who develop science-themed content. This collaboration allows for industry professionals to accurately portray the science that they wish to capture and include in their media production. It also provides scientists and science organizations with the opportunity to communicate effectively with a large audience that may otherwise be hard to reach such as through innovative physics outreach. It also provides a variety of other services, including scheduling briefings, brainstorming sessions, screenings, and salons. The Exchange is based in Los Angeles, California.
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I hadn’t realized the exchange was physics specific. Given the success with physics, I’d expect the biology and chemistry communities would be eager to participate or start their own exchanges.
Back in 2019 Canada was having a problem with Malaysia and the Phillipines over the garbage (this is meant literally) that we were shipping over to those counties, which is why an article about Chinese science fiction writer, Chen Qiufan and his 2013 novel, The Waste Tide, caught my attention and I pubisihed this May 31, 2019 posting, “Chen Qiufan, garbage, and Chinese science fiction stories.” There’s a very brief mention of Liu Cxin in one of the excerpts.
Where explosions are concerned you might expect to see some army research and you would be right. A June 29, 2020 news item on ScienceDaily breaks the news,
Since World War I, the vast majority of American combat casualties has come not from gunshot wounds but from explosions. Today, most soldiers wear a heavy, bullet-proof vest to protect their torso but much of their body remains exposed to the indiscriminate aim of explosive fragments and shrapnel.
Designing equipment to protect extremities against the extreme temperatures and deadly projectiles that accompany an explosion has been difficult because of a fundamental property of materials. Materials that are strong enough to protect against ballistic threats can’t protect against extreme temperatures and vice versa. As a result, much of today’s protective equipment is composed of multiple layers of different materials, leading to bulky, heavy gear that, if worn on the arms and legs, would severely limit a soldier’s mobility.
Now, Harvard University researchers, in collaboration with the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command Soldier Center (CCDC SC) and West Point, have developed a lightweight, multifunctional nanofiber material that can protect wearers from both extreme temperatures and ballistic threats.
“When I was in combat in Afghanistan, I saw firsthand how body armor could save lives,” said senior author Kit Parker, the Tarr Family Professor of Bioengineering and Applied Physics at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and a lieutenant colonel in the United States Army Reserve. “I also saw how heavy body armor could limit mobility. As soldiers on the battlefield, the three primary tasks are to move, shoot, and communicate. If you limit one of those, you decrease survivability and you endanger mission success.”
“Our goal was to design a multifunctional material that could protect someone working in an extreme environment, such as an astronaut, firefighter or soldier, from the many different threats they face,” said Grant M. Gonzalez, a postdoctoral fellow at SEAS and first author of the paper.
In order to achieve this practical goal, the researchers needed to explore the tradeoff between mechanical protection and thermal insulation, properties rooted in a material’s molecular structure and orientation.
Materials with strong mechanical protection, such as metals and ceramics, have a highly ordered and aligned molecular structure. This structure allows them to withstand and distribute the energy of a direct blow. Insulating materials, on the other hand, have a much less ordered structure, which prevents the transmission of heat through the material.
Kevlar and Twaron are commercial products used extensively in protective equipment and can provide either ballistic or thermal protection, depending on how they are manufactured. Woven Kevlar, for example, has a highly aligned crystalline structure and is used in protective bulletproof vests. Porous Kevlar aerogels, on the other hand, have been shown to have high thermal insulation.
“Our idea was to use this Kevlar polymer to combine the woven, ordered structure of fibers with the porosity of aerogels to make long, continuous fibers with porous spacing in between,” said Gonzalez. “In this system, the long fibers could resist a mechanical impact while the pores would limit heat diffusion.”
The research team used immersion Rotary Jet-Spinning (iRJS), a technique developed by Parker’s Disease Biophysics Group, to manufacture the fibers. In this technique, a liquid polymer solution is loaded into a reservoir and pushed out through a tiny opening by centrifugal force as the device spins. When the polymer solution shoots out of the reservoir, it first passes through an area of open air, where the polymers elongate and the chains align. Then the solution hits a liquid bath that removes the solvent and precipitates the polymers to form solid fibers. Since the bath is also spinning — like water in a salad spinner — the nanofibers follow the stream of the vortex and wrap around a rotating collector at the base of the device.
By tuning the viscosity of the liquid polymer solution, the researchers were able to spin long, aligned nanofibers into porous sheets — providing enough order to protect against projectiles but enough disorder to protect against heat. In about 10 minutes, the team could spin sheets about 10 by 30 centimeters in size.
To test the sheets, the Harvard team turned to their collaborators to perform ballistic tests. Researchers at CCDC SC in Natick, Massachusetts simulated shrapnel impact by shooting large, BB-like projectiles at the sample. The team performed tests by sandwiching the nanofiber sheets between sheets of woven Twaron. They observed little difference in protection between a stack of all woven Twaron sheets and a combined stack of woven Twaron and spun nanofibers.
“The capabilities of the CCDC SC allow us to quantify the successes of our fibers from the perspective of protective equipment for warfighters, specifically,” said Gonzalez.
“Academic collaborations, especially those with distinguished local universities such as Harvard, provide CCDC SC the opportunity to leverage cutting-edge expertise and facilities to augment our own R&D capabilities,” said Kathleen Swana, a researcher at CCDC SC and one of the paper’s authors. “CCDC SC, in return, provides valuable scientific and soldier-centric expertise and testing capabilities to help drive the research forward.”
In testing for thermal protection, the researchers found that the nanofibers provided 20 times the heat insulation capability of commercial Twaron and Kevlar.
“While there are improvements that could be made, we have pushed the boundaries of what’s possible and started moving the field towards this kind of multifunctional material,” said Gonzalez.
“We’ve shown that you can develop highly protective textiles for people that work in harm’s way,” said Parker. “Our challenge now is to evolve the scientific advances to innovative products for my brothers and sisters in arms.”
Harvard’s Office of Technology Development has filed a patent application for the technology and is actively seeking commercialization opportunities.
While this is the first time I’ve featured clothing/armour that’s protective against explosions I have on at least two occasions featured bulletproof clothing in a Canadian context. A November 4, 2013 posting had a story about a Toronto-based tailoring establishment, Garrison Bespoke, that was going to publicly test a bulletproof business suit. Should you be interested, it is possible to order the suit here. There’s also a February 11, 2020 posting announcing research into “Comfortable, bulletproof clothing for Canada’s Department of National Defence.”
Japanese scientists have developed a more precise method for culturing stem cells according to a March 14, 2017 news item on Nanowerk,
A team of researchers in Japan has developed a new platform for culturing human pluripotent stem cells that provides far more control of culture conditions than previous tools by using micro and nanotechnologies.
The Multiplexed Artificial Cellular Microenvironment (MACME) array places nanofibres, mimicking cellular matrices, into fluid-filled micro-chambers of precise sizes, which mimic extracellular environments.
Caption: The Multiplexed Artificial Cellular Microenvironment (MACME) array, consisted with a microfluidic structure and nanofibre array for mimicking cellular microenvironments. Credit: Kyoto University iCeMS
Human pluripotent stems cells (hPSCs) hold great promise for tissue engineering, regenerative medicine and cell-based therapies because they can become any type of cell. The environment surrounding the cells plays a major role in determining what tissues they become, if they replicate into more cells, or die. However, understanding these interactions has been difficult because researchers have lacked tools that work on the appropriate scale.
Often, stem cells are cultured in a cell culture medium in small petri dishes. While factors such as medium pH levels and nutrients can be controlled, the artificial set up is on the macroscopic scale and does not allow for precise control of the physical environment surrounding the cells.
The MACME array miniaturizes this set up, culturing stem cells in rows of micro-chambers of cell culture medium. It also takes it a step further by placing nanofibers in these chambers to mimic the structures found around cells.
Led by Ken-ichiro Kamei of Kyoto University’s Institute for Integrated Cell-Material Sciences (iCeMS), the team tested a variety of nanofiber materials and densities, micro-chamber heights and initial stem cell densities to determine the best combination that encourages human pluripotent stem cells to replicate.
They stained the cells with several fluorescent markers and used a microscope to see if the cells died, replicated or differentiated into tissues.
Their analysis revealed that gelatin nanofibers and medium-sized chambers that create medium seed cell density provided the best environment for the stem cells to continue to multiply. The quantity and density of neighboring cells strongly influences cell survival.
The array is an “optimal and powerful approach for understanding how environmental cues regulate cellular functions,” the researchers conclude in a recently published paper in the journal Small.
This array appears to be the first time multiple kinds of extracellular environments can be mounted onto a single device, making it much easier to compare how different environments influence cells.
The MACME array could substantially reduce experiment costs compared to conventional tools, in part because it is low volume and requires less cell culture medium. The array does not require any special equipment and is compatible with both commonly used laboratory pipettes and automated pipette systems for performing high-throughput screening.
Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,
Microfluidic-Nanofiber Hybrid Array for Screening of Cellular Microenvironments by Ken-ichiro Kamei, Yasumasa Mashimo, Momoko Yoshioka, Yumie Tokunaga, Christopher Fockenberg, Shiho Terada, Yoshie Koyama, Minako Nakajima, Teiko Shibata-Seki, Li Liu, Toshihiro Akaike, Eiry Kobatake, Siew-Eng How, Motonari Uesugi, and Yong Chen. Small DOI: 10.1002/smll.201603104 Version of Record online: 8 MAR 2017
A portable nanofiber fabrication device is quite an achievement although it seems it’s not quite ready for prime time yet. From a March 1, 2017 news item on Nanowerk (Note: A link has been removed),
Harvard researchers have developed a lightweight, portable nanofiber fabrication device that could one day be used to dress wounds on a battlefield or dress shoppers in customizable fabrics. The research was published recently in Macromolecular Materials and Engineering (“Design and Fabrication of Fibrous Nanomaterials Using Pull Spinning”)
A schematic of the pull spinning apparatus with a side view illustration of a fiber being pulled from the polymer reservoir. The pull spinning system consists of a rotating bristle that dips and pulls a polymer jet in a spiral trajectory (Leila Deravi/Harvard University)
A March 1, 2017 Harvard University news release (also on EurekAlert) by Leah Burrow,, which originated the news item, describes the current process for nanofiber fabrication and explains how this technique is an improvement,
There are many ways to make nanofibers. These versatile materials — whose target applications include everything from tissue engineering to bullet proof vests — have been made using centrifugal force, capillary force, electric field, stretching, blowing, melting, and evaporation.
Each of these fabrication methods has pros and cons. For example, Rotary Jet-Spinning (RJS) and Immersion Rotary Jet-Spinning (iRJS) are novel manufacturing techniques developed in the Disease Biophysics Group at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering. Both RJS and iRJS dissolve polymers and proteins in a liquid solution and use centrifugal force or precipitation to elongate and solidify polymer jets into nanoscale fibers. These methods are great for producing large amounts of a range of materials – including DNA, nylon, and even Kevlar – but until now they haven’t been particularly portable.
The Disease Biophysics Group recently announced the development of a hand-held device that can quickly produce nanofibers with precise control over fiber orientation. Regulating fiber alignment and deposition is crucial when building nanofiber scaffolds that mimic highly aligned tissue in the body or designing point-of-use garments that fit a specific shape.
“Our main goal for this research was to make a portable machine that you could use to achieve controllable deposition of nanofibers,” said Nina Sinatra, a graduate student in the Disease Biophysics Group and co-first author of the paper. “In order to develop this kind of point-and-shoot device, we needed a technique that could produce highly aligned fibers with a reasonably high throughput.”
The new fabrication method, called pull spinning, uses a high-speed rotating bristle that dips into a polymer or protein reservoir and pulls a droplet from solution into a jet. The fiber travels in a spiral trajectory and solidifies before detaching from the bristle and moving toward a collector. Unlike other processes, which involve multiple manufacturing variables, pull spinning requires only one processing parameter — solution viscosity — to regulate nanofiber diameter. Minimal process parameters translate to ease of use and flexibility at the bench and, one day, in the field.
Pull spinning works with a range of different polymers and proteins. The researchers demonstrated proof-of-concept applications using polycaprolactone and gelatin fibers to direct muscle tissue growth and function on bioscaffolds, and nylon and polyurethane fibers for point-of-wear apparel.
“This simple, proof-of-concept study demonstrates the utility of this system for point-of-use manufacturing,” said Kit Parker, the Tarr Family Professor of Bioengineering and Applied Physics and director of the Disease Biophysics Group. “Future applications for directed production of customizable nanotextiles could extend to spray-on sportswear that gradually heats or cools an athlete’s body, sterile bandages deposited directly onto a wound, and fabrics with locally varying mechanical properties.”
Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,
Design and Fabrication of Fibrous Nanomaterials Using Pull Spinning by Leila F. Deravi, Nina R. Sinatra, Christophe O. Chantre, Alexander P. Nesmith, Hongyan Yuan, Sahm K. Deravi, Josue A. Goss, Luke A. MacQueen, Mohammad R. Badrossamy, Grant M. Gonzalez, Michael D. Phillips, and Kevin Kit Parker. Macromolecular Materials and Engineering DOI: 10.1002/mame.201600404 Version of Record online: 17 JAN 2017
This work on a new technique for producing nanofibers comes from Harvard University’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering (also at Harvard University). From an Oct. 10, 2016 news item on phys.org,
Fibrous materials—known for their toughness, durability and pliability—are used in everything from bulletproof vests to tires, filtration systems and cellular scaffolds for tissue engineering and regenerative medicine.
The properties of these materials are such that the smaller the fibers are, the stronger and tougher they become. But making certain fibers very small has been an engineering challenge.
Now, researchers from the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard have developed a new method to make and collect nanofibers and control their size and morphology. This could lead to stronger, more durable bulletproof vests and armor and more robust cellular scaffolding for tissue repair.
Nanofibers are smaller than one micrometer in diameter. Most nanofiber production platforms rely on dissolving polymers in a solution, which then evaporates as the fiber forms.
Rotary Jet-Spinning (RJS), the technique developed by Kit Parker’s Disease Biophysics Group, works likes a cotton candy machine. Parker is Tarr Family Professor of Bioengineering and Applied Physics at SEAS and a Core Member of the Wyss Institute. A liquid polymer solution is loaded into a reservoir and pushed out through a tiny opening by centrifugal force as the device spins. As the solution leaves the reservoir, the solvent evaporates and the polymers solidify and elongate into small, thin fibers.
“This advance is important because it allows us to manufacture ballistic protection that is much lighter, more flexible and more functional than what is available today,” said Parker, who in addition to his Harvard role is a lieutenant colonel in the United States Army Reserve and was motivated by his own combat experiences in Afghanistan. “Not only could it save lives but for the warfighter, it also could help reduce the repetitive injury motions that soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen have suffered over the last 15 years of the war on terror.”
“Rotary Jet-Spinning is great for most polymer fibers you want to make,” said Grant Gonzalez, a graduate student at SEAS and first author of the paper. “However, some fibers require a solvent that doesn’t evaporate easily. Para-aramid, the polymer used in Kevlar® for example, is dissolved in sulfuric acid, which doesn’t evaporate off. The solution just splashes against the walls of the device without forming fibers.”
Nanofibers are smaller than one micrometer in diameter. Most nanofiber production platforms rely on dissolving polymers in a solution, which then evaporates as the fiber forms.
Rotary Jet-Spinning (RJS), the technique developed by Kit Parker’s Disease Biophysics Group, works likes a cotton candy machine. Parker is Tarr Family Professor of Bioengineering and Applied Physics at SEAS and a Core Member of the Wyss Institute. A liquid polymer solution is loaded into a reservoir and pushed out through a tiny opening by centrifugal force as the device spins. As the solution leaves the reservoir, the solvent evaporates and the polymers solidify and elongate into small, thin fibers.
“This advance is important because it allows us to manufacture ballistic protection that is much lighter, more flexible and more functional than what is available today,” said Parker, who in addition to his Harvard role is a lieutenant colonel in the United States Army Reserve and was motivated by his own combat experiences in Afghanistan. “Not only could it save lives but for the warfighter, it also could help reduce the repetitive injury motions that soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen have suffered over the last 15 years of the war on terror.”
“Rotary Jet-Spinning is great for most polymer fibers you want to make,” said Grant Gonzalez, a graduate student at SEAS and first author of the paper. “However, some fibers require a solvent that doesn’t evaporate easily. Para-aramid, the polymer used in Kevlar® for example, is dissolved in sulfuric acid, which doesn’t evaporate off. The solution just splashes against the walls of the device without forming fibers.”
Other methods, such as electrospinning, which uses an electric field to pull the polymer into a thin fiber, also have poor results with Kevlar and other polymers such as alginate used for tissue scaffolding and DNA.
The Harvard team overcame these challenges by developing a wet-spinning platform, which uses the same principles as the RJS system but relies on precipitation rather than evaporation to separate the solvent from the polymer.
In this system, called immersion Rotary Jet-Spinning (iRJS), when the polymer solution shoots out of the reservoir, it first passes through an area of open air, where the polymers elongate and the chains align. Then the solution hits a liquid bath that removes the solvent and precipitates the polymers to form solid fibers. Since the bath is also spinning — like water in a salad spinner — the nanofibers follow the stream of the vortex and wrap around a rotating collector at the base of the device.
Using this system, the team produced Nylon, DNA, alginate and ballistic resistant para-aramid nanofibers. The team could tune the fiber’s diameter by changing the solution concentration, the rotational speed and the distance the polymer traveled from the reservoir to the bath.
“By being able to modulate fiber strength, we can create a cellular scaffold that can mimic skeleton muscle and native tissues,” said Gonzalez. “This platform could enable us to create a wound dressing out of alginate material or seed and mature cells on scaffolding for tissue engineering.”
Because the fibers were collected by a spinning vortex, the system also produced well-aligned sheets of nanofibers, which is important for scaffolding and ballistic resistant materials.
This is the ‘candy floss’ technique at work,
Rotary Jet-Spinning (RJS) works likes a cotton candy machine. A liquid polymer solution is loaded into a reservoir and pushed out through a tiny opening by centrifugal force as the device spins. As the solution leaves the reservoir, the solvent evaporates and the polymers solidify and elongate into small, thin fibers. Courtesy: Harvard University
Researchers in Singapore have proposed a new technology for cleaning up oil spills, according to a June 17, 2016 news item on Nanowerk,
Large-scale oil spills, where hundreds of tons of petroleum products are accidentally released into the oceans, not only have devastating effects on the environment, but have significant socio-economic impact as well [1].
Current techniques of cleaning up oil spills are not very efficient and may even cause further pollution or damage to the environment. These methods, which include the use of toxic detergent-like compounds called dispersants or burning of the oil slick, result in incomplete removal of the oil. The oil molecules remain in the water over long periods and may even be spread over a larger area as they are carried by wind and waves. Further, burning can only be applied to fresh oil slicks of at least 3 millimeters thick, and this process would also cause secondary environmental pollution.
In a bid to improve the technology utilized by cleanup crews to manage and contain such large spills, researchers from the Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (IBN) of A*STAR [located in Singapore] have invented a smart oil-scavenging material or supergelators that could help clean up oil spills efficiently and rapidly to prevent secondary pollution.
These supergelators are derived from highly soluble small organic molecules, which instantly self-assemble into nanofibers to form a 3D net that traps the oil molecules so that they can be removed easily from the surface of the water.
“Marine oil spills have a disastrous impact on the environment and marine life, and result in an enormous economic burden on society. Our rapid-acting supergelators offer an effective cleanup solution that can help to contain the severe environmental damage and impact of such incidents in the future,” said IBN Executive Director Professor Jackie Y. Ying.
Motivated by the urgent need for a more effective oil spill control solution, the IBN researchers developed new compounds that dissolve easily in environmentally friendly solvents and gel rapidly upon contact with oil. The supergelator molecules arrange themselves into a 3D network, entangling the oil molecules into clumps that can then be easily skimmed off the water’s surface.
“The most interesting and useful characteristic of our molecules is their ability to stack themselves on top of each other. These stacked columns allow our researchers to create and test different molecular constructions, while finding the best structure that will yield the desired properties,” said IBN Team Leader and Principal Research Scientist Dr Huaqiang Zeng. (Animation: Click to see how the supergelators stack themselves into columns.)
IBN’s supergelators have been tested on various types of weathered and unweathered crude oil in seawater, and have been found to be effective in solidifying all of them. The supergelators take only minutes to solidify the oil at room temperature for easy removal from water. In addition, tests carried out by the research team showed that the supergelator was not toxic to human cells, as well as zebrafish embryos and larvae. The researchers believe that these qualities would make the supergelators suitable for use in large oil spill areas.
The Institute is looking for industrial partners to further develop its technology for commercial use. [emphasis mine]
The well documented BP Gulf of Mexico oil well accident in 2010 was a catastrophe on an unprecedented scale, with damages amounting to hundreds of billions of dollars. Its wide-ranging effects on the marine ecosystem, as well as the fishing and tourism industries, can still be felt six years on.
Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,
Instant Room-Temperature Gelation of Crude Oil by Chiral Organogelators by Changliang Ren, Grace Hwee Boon Ng, Hong Wu, Kiat-Hwa Chan, Jie Shen, Cathleen Teh, Jackie Y. Ying, and Huaqiang Zeng. Chem. Mater., 2016, 28 (11), pp 4001–4008 DOI: 10.1021/acs.chemmater.6b01367 Publication Date (Web): May 10, 2016
I have featured other nanotechnology-enabled oil spill cleanup solutions here. One of the more recent pieces is my Dec. 7, 2015 post about boron nitride sponges. The search terms: ‘oil spill’ and ‘oil spill cleanup’ will help you unearth more.
There have been some promising possibilities and I hope one day these clean up technologies will be brought to market.
A May 31, 2016 news item on phys.org describes research on self-assembling fibres at Kyoto University (Japan) by referencing the ancient Greek mythological figure, Psyche,
The Greek goddess Psyche borrowed help from ants to sort a room full of different grains. Cells, on the other hand, do something similar without Olympian assistance, as they organize molecules into robust, functional fibers. Now scientists are able to see self-sorting phenomena happen in real time with artificial molecules.
The achievement, reported in Nature Chemistry, elucidates how two different types of nanofibers sort themselves into organized structures under artificial conditions.
“Basic cellular structures, such as actin filaments, come into being through the autonomous self-sorting of individual molecules, even though a tremendous variety of proteins and small molecules are present inside the cell,” says lead author Hajime Shigemitsu, a researcher in Itaru Hamachi’s lab at Kyoto University.
“Imagine a box filled with an assortment of building blocks — it’s as if the same type of blocks started sorting themselves into neat bundles all on their own. In living cells, such phenomena always happen, enabling accurate self-assembling of proteins, which is essential for cell functions.”
“If we are able to control self-sorting with artificial molecules, we can work toward developing intelligent, next-generation biomimics that possess the flexibility and diversity of functions that exist in a living cell.”
Study co-author Ryou Kubota explains that previous studies have already made artificial molecules build themselves into fibers — but only when there was one type of molecule around. Having a jumble of types, on the other hand, made the molecules confused.
“The difficulty in inducing self-assembly with artificial molecules is that they don’t recognize the same type of molecule, unlike molecules in the natural world. Different types of artificial molecules interact with each other and make an unsorted cluster.”
From a database of structural analyses, Hamachi and colleagues discovered a combination of nanofibers — namely a peptide-based and lipid-based hydrogelator — that would make sorted fibers without mixing with the other. They then tethered the fibers with fluorescent probes; with a type of microscope typically used in cell imaging, the team was able to observe directly and in real-time how the artificial molecules sorted themselves.
“Ultimately, this finding could help develop new materials that respond dynamically to different environments and stimuli,” elaborates Hamachi. “This insight is not only useful for materials science, but may also provide useful clues for understanding self-organization in cells.”
The scientists are using what looks like a hairbrush to create nanofibres ,
Figure 2: Brush-spinning of nanofibers. (Reprinted with permission by Wiley-VCH Verlag)) [downloaded from http://www.nanowerk.com/spotlight/spotid=41398.php]
A Sept. 23, 2015 Nanowerk Spotlight article by Michael Berger provides an in depth look at this technique (developed by a joint research team of scientists from the University of Georgia, Princeton University, and Oxford University) which could make producing nanofibers for use in scaffolds (tissue engineering and other applications) more easily and cheaply,
Polymer nanofibers are used in a wide range of applications such as the design of new composite materials, the fabrication of nanostructured biomimetic scaffolds for artificial bones and organs, biosensors, fuel cells or water purification systems.
“The simplest method of nanofiber fabrication is direct drawing from a polymer solution using a glass micropipette,” Alexander Tokarev, Ph.D., a Research Associate in the Nanostructured Materials Laboratory at the University of Georgia, tells Nanowerk. “This method however does not scale up and thus did not find practical applications. In our new work, we introduce a scalable method of nanofiber spinning named touch-spinning.”
James Cook in a Sept. 23, 2015 article for Materials Views provides a description of the technology,
A glass rod is glued to a rotating stage, whose diameter can be chosen over a wide range of a few centimeters to more than 1 m. A polymer solution is supplied, for example, from a needle of a syringe pump that faces the glass rod. The distance between the droplet of polymer solution and the tip of the glass rod is adjusted so that the glass rod contacts the polymer droplet as it rotates.
Following the initial “touch”, the polymer droplet forms a liquid bridge. As the stage rotates the bridge stretches and fiber length increases, with the diameter decreasing due to mass conservation. It was shown that the diameter of the fiber can be precisely controlled down to 40 nm by the speed of the stage rotation.
The method can be easily scaled-up by using a round hairbrush composed of 600 filaments.
When the rotating brush touches the surface of a polymer solution, the brush filaments draw many fibers simultaneously producing hundred kilometers of fibers in minutes.
The drawn fibers are uniform since the fiber diameter depends on only two parameters: polymer concentration and speed of drawing.
Returning to Berger’s Spotlight article, there is an important benefit with this technique,
As the team points out, one important aspect of the method is the drawing of single filament fibers.
These single filament fibers can be easily wound onto spools of different shapes and dimensions so that well aligned one-directional, orthogonal or randomly oriented fiber meshes with a well-controlled average mesh size can be fabricated using this very simple method.
“Owing to simplicity of the method, our set-up could be used in any biomedical lab and facility,” notes Tokarev. “For example, a customized scaffold by size, dimensions and othermorphologic characteristics can be fabricated using donor biomaterials.”
Berger’s and Cook’s articles offer more illustrations and details.
Here’s a link to and a citation for the paper,
Touch- and Brush-Spinning of Nanofibers by Alexander Tokarev, Darya Asheghal, Ian M. Griffiths, Oleksandr Trotsenko, Alexey Gruzd, Xin Lin, Howard A. Stone, and Sergiy Minko. Advanced Materials DOI: 10.1002/adma.201502768ViewFirst published: 23 September 2015
It’s always nice to feature a ‘nano and music’ research story, my Nov. 6, 2013 posting being, until now, the most recent. A Jan. 8, 2014 news item on Nanowerk describes Japanese researchers’ efforts with nanofibers (Note: A link has been removed),
Humans create and perform music for a variety of purposes, such as aesthetic pleasure, healing, religion, and ceremony. Accordingly, a scientific question arises: Can molecules or molecular assemblies interact physically with the sound vibrations of music? In the journal ChemPlusChem (“Acoustic Alignment of a Supramolecular Nanofiber in Harmony with the Sound of Music”), Japanese researchers have now revealed their physical interaction. When classical music was playing, a designed supramolecular nanofiber in a solution dynamically aligned in harmony with the sound of music.
Sound is vibration of matter, having a frequency, in which certain physical interactions occur between the acoustically vibrating media and solute molecules or molecular assemblies. Music is an art form consisting of the sound and silence expressed through time, and characterized by rhythm, harmony, and melody. The question of whether music can cause any kind of molecular or macromolecular event is controversial, and the physical interaction between the molecules and the sound of music has never been reported.
Scientists working at Kobe University and Kobe City College of Technology, Japan, have now developed a supramolecular nanofiber, composed of an anthracene derivative, which can dynamically align by sensing acoustic streaming flows generated by the sound of music. Time course linear dichroism (LD) spectroscopy could visualize spectroscopically the dynamic acoustic alignments of the nanofiber in the solution. The nanofiber aligns upon exposure to the audible sound wave, with frequencies up to 1000 Hz, with quick responses to the sound and silence, and amplitude and frequency changes of the sound wave. The sheared flows generated around glass-surface boundary layer and the crossing area of the downward and upward flows allow shear-induced alignments of the nanofiber.
Music is composed of the multi complex sounds and silence, which characteristically change in the course of its playtime. The team, led by A. Tsuda, uses “Symphony No. 5 in C minor, First movement: Allegro con brio” written by Beethoven, and “Symphony No. 40 in G minor, K. 550, First movement”, written by Mozart in the experiments. When the classical music was playing, the sample solution gave the characteristic LD profile of the music, where the nanofiber dynamically aligned in harmony with the sound of music.
Here’s an imagie illustrating the scientists’ work with music,
[downloaded from http://www.chemistryviews.org/details/ezine/5712621/Musical_Molecules.html]