Monthly Archives: February 2014

NASA Boards the 3-D-Manufacturing Train

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Given NASA's unique needs for highly customized spacecraft and instrument components, additive manufacturing, or "3-D printing," offers a compelling alternative to more traditional manufacturing approaches.

image: This battery case, created with a material called Polyetherketoneketone, is the first 3-D-printed component Goddard has flown. Developed under a university-industry partnership, the part was demonstrated during a sounding-rocket mission testing a thermal-control device developed with R&D funding Image Credit: NASA

"We're not driving the additive manufacturing train, industry is," said Ted Swanson, the assistant chief for technology for the Mechanical Systems Division at NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. Swanson is the center's point-of-contact for additive manufacturing. "But NASA has the ability to get on-board to leverage it for our unique needs."

Led by NASA's Space Technology Mission Directorate, the agency has launched a number of formal programs to prototype new tools for current and future missions using this emerging manufacturing technique. Additive manufacturing involves computer-aided device, or CAD, models and sophisticated printers that literally deposit successive layers of metal, plastic or some other material until they are complete.

In addition to the U.S. Air Force, DOE, NIST and NSF, NASA is part of the government team investing in, America Makes, formerly known as the National Additive Manufacturing Innovation Institute, a public-private partnership created to transition this exciting technology into mainstream U.S. manufacturing.

America Makes is part of the National Manufacturing Initiative, a forward-leaning effort that recognizes our economy requires an advanced, globally competitive manufacturing sector that invents and makes high-value-added products and leading-edge technologies here in the U.S.

"NASA's work with additive manufacturing should enable us to be smart buyers and help us save time, expense, and mass," said LaNetra Tate, the advanced-manufacturing principal investigator for the Space Technology Mission Directorate's Game Changing Development Program. "With additive manufacturing, we have an opportunity to push the envelope on how this technology might be used in zero gravity how we might ultimately manufacture in space."As a result of these efforts and others sponsored around the agency, teams of NASA engineers and scientists are investigating how their instruments and missions might benefit from an industry that actually began more than two decades ago, with the introduction of the world's first 3-D system.

"This effort really goes beyond one center," said Matt Showalter, who is overseeing Goddard's disparate 3-D printing efforts. Showalter believes Goddard technologists and scientists will benefit most from collaborations with others also investigating the technology's benefits. "It's in the national interest to collaborate with other institutions. This is a powerful tool and we need to look at how we can implement it. For us, it's a team effort."

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NASA Boards the 3-D-Manufacturing Train

NASA's Student Launch Challenge Looking For Next Generation Of Engineers

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February 6, 2014

Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com Your Universe Online

Students from several universities are taking part in a NASA event by designing and launching innovative rockets.

NASA said its Student Launch Challenge will include 26 colleges and universities from 16 states and Puerto Rico. The event, being held May 15 17 at the Bonneville Salt Flats in Tooele County, Utah, is another way the space agency is gearing up the next generation of engineers.

This new engineering competition ties participating students work to NASAs pursuit of new, more demanding missions, William Gerstenmaier, NASAs associate administrator for human exploration and operations, said in a statement. Giving these students exposure to building and launching model rockets to 20,000 feet allows them to recognize the challenges in pushing new limits.

During the challenge, student teams will be asked to go through rigorous launch readiness reviews before launching their rockets. NASA said the challenge was inspired by the space agencys mission to build, test and fly the new Space Launch System, which is the agencys next flagship rocket.

Students will be required to build their vehicles with a parachute-based recovery system and provide three payloads capable of delivering data that could help shape future NASA missions. One mandatory payload for all students to equip their rockets with is a landing hazard detection system, which will include a camera and customized software to transmit real-time information about surface conditions.

Teams will be able to select the other two payload systems on the rocket from a list of options that support NASA spacecraft development strategies. Some of these payloads include studying how liquids move in microgravity and studying the environmental effects of supersonic flight on vehicle paints and coatings.

The students will be required to predict the maximum flight altitude of their vehicle based on the research needs of their payloads. According to the rules, no rockets are allowed to fly higher than 20,000 feet. The team that comes closest to this altitude without breaching the threshold will receive the altitude award. Last year, students were asked to keep their rockets below 5,280 feet, or 1 mile.

NASA will be judging teams on a successful launch and payload development, as well as thoroughness of supporting documentation. The winning team will receive a $5,000 prize, which is being offered by ATK Aerospace Group of Promontory, Utah.

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NASA's Student Launch Challenge Looking For Next Generation Of Engineers

NASA boards the 3D-manufacturing train

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Given NASA's unique needs for highly customized spacecraft and instrument components, additive manufacturing, or "3-D printing," offers a compelling alternative to more traditional manufacturing approaches.

"We're not driving the additive manufacturing train, industry is," said Ted Swanson, the assistant chief for technology for the Mechanical Systems Division at NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. Swanson is the center's point-of-contact for additive manufacturing. "But NASA has the ability to get on-board to leverage it for our unique needs."

Led by NASA's Space Technology Mission Directorate, the agency has launched a number of formal programs to prototype new tools for current and future missions using this emerging manufacturing technique. Additive manufacturing involves computer-aided device, or CAD, models and sophisticated printers that literally deposit successive layers of metal, plastic or some other material until they are complete.

In addition to the U.S. Air Force, DOE, NIST and NSF, NASA is part of the government team investing in, America Makes, formerly known as the National Additive Manufacturing Innovation Institute, a public-private partnership created to transition this exciting technology into mainstream U.S. manufacturing.

America Makes is part of the National Manufacturing Initiative, a forward-leaning effort that recognizes our economy requires an advanced, globally competitive manufacturing sector that invents and makes high-value-added products and leading-edge technologies here in the U.S.

"NASA's work with additive manufacturing should enable us to be smart buyers and help us save time, expense, and mass," said LaNetra Tate, the advanced-manufacturing principal investigator for the Space Technology Mission Directorate's Game Changing Development Program. "With additive manufacturing, we have an opportunity to push the envelope on how this technology might be used in zero gravity how we might ultimately manufacture in space."

As a result of these efforts and others sponsored around the agency, teams of NASA engineers and scientists are investigating how their instruments and missions might benefit from an industry that actually began more than two decades ago, with the introduction of the world's first 3-D system.

"This effort really goes beyond one center," said Matt Showalter, who is overseeing Goddard's disparate 3-D printing efforts. Showalter believes Goddard technologists and scientists will benefit most from collaborations with others also investigating the technology's benefits. "It's in the national interest to collaborate with other institutions. This is a powerful tool and we need to look at how we can implement it. For us, it's a team effort."

A majority of NASA centers have begun applying the technology to a number of applications pertinent to their areas of expertise.

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NASA boards the 3D-manufacturing train

Nanobio-Europe 2014 focuses Nano Medicine/Nanomaterials in Diagnostics and Therapy

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06.02.2014 - (idw) Center for Nanotechnology- CeNTech

The 10th Nanobio-Europe, Europe's leading conference in the field of nanobiotechnology, will take place June 2 4, 2014 in Mnster / Germany. The focus of the three-day conference is on medical applications of nanomaterials for diagnostic and therapeutic purposes. Of particular interest is the characterization of cellular processes and mechanisms by state of the art nano analytical and imaging techniques. Furthermore, the use of nanomaterials in medical implants, in regenerative medicine and diagnostics as well as for targeted drug delivery will be addressed. Toxicological studies of nanomaterials and presentations of large NanoBio EU projects complete the program.

After 2005, 2007 and 2010 the NanoBio-Europe will be in Mnster now for the fourth time. This conference provides the ideal platform for interdisciplinary communication and the initiation of new research projects for participants from academic and industry. In addition to an outstanding scientific program an industrial exhibition informs about new innovative products and technologies. Coordinator is the Center for Nanotechnology Mnster (CeNTech) in cooperation with Bioanalytik Mnster. Weitere Informationen:http://www.nanobio-europe.com Anhang pa_nanobio-europe_140206_eng

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Nanobio-Europe 2014 focuses Nano Medicine/Nanomaterials in Diagnostics and Therapy

Rice's Naomi Halas elected to National Academy of Engineering

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PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

6-Feb-2014

Contact: David Ruth david@rice.edu 713-348-6327 Rice University

Rice University Professor Naomi Halas today joined the elite rank of scientists who have been elected to both the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) and the National Academy of Engineering (NAE). Halas is one of 67 new NAE members announced today and was elected to the NAS in 2013.

Less than 5 percent of NAS and NAE members have dual membership, and Halas is one of 12 women ever chosen for the dual honor. Election to these academies is one of the highest honors that can be conferred upon a U.S. scientist or engineer.

Halas is Rice's Stanley C. Moore Professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering and a professor of biomedical engineering, chemistry, and physics and astronomy. She also is the founding director of Rice's Laboratory for Nanophotonics and director of the Rice Quantum Institute. She is the first person in the university's history to be elected to both the NAS and NAE for research done at Rice.

The national academies -- private, nonprofit institutions that provide science, technology and health policy advice under a congressional charter -- date to the formation of the NAS in 1863. Today, the academies include the NAS, NAE, the Institute of Medicine and the National Research Council.

"Election to a national academy is an honor bestowed by one's peers in the academy, and the fact that Naomi has earned the rare distinction of being elected to both the National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Science is a testament to her sustained, long-standing and fundamental contributions to cross-disciplinary science," said Ned Thomas, the William and Stephanie Sick Dean of Rice's George R. Brown School of Engineering and professor in materials science and nanoengineering and in chemical and biomolecular engineering. "Rice is doubly honored because the contributions were all made right here over the course of her remarkable Rice career."

Halas' research crosses boundaries of applied physics, chemistry, electrical engineering, medicine and optics. She joined Rice in the first wave of researchers recruited by the late Richard Smalley to explore the frontiers of nanotechnology. Halas, who had trained at IBM's T.J. Watson Research Center and at Bell Laboratories, was uniquely positioned for nanoscience because of her training in both chemistry and physics.

Halas said Rice's small size was attractive, largely because of the corresponding culture of interdepartmental collaboration made possible by the campus's various institutes.

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Crossbar nanowire chips combine to form tiny CPU for …

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As transistor technology continues its march forward with smaller, faster components, were getting ever closer to the point at which the realities of atomic scale will put an end to Moores law unless we find a way around it. A team of researchers from Harvard and non-profit research company Mitre have devised a possible solution to the problem using nanowires as a stand-in for traditional transistors in tiny processors.

The device created in the lab is by no means a match for modern computer processors, but it is built on a completely new process. The chip designed by chemist Charles Lieber and his team uses germanium core nanowires just 15 nanometers wide. The wires themselves are coated in silicon and are laid out in parallel on a silicon dioxide substrate. Embedded in the surface of the chip is a network of chromium and gold contacts, but these run the opposite way, creating a crisscross pattern.

Each of the points in the chip where the nanowire crosses the embedded contacts can act as a programmable transistor node. Applying voltage to the nanowires toggles them between on and off. The researchers call this a crossbar array.

The Harvard chip has 180 of these faux-transistors divided into three separate tiles. One tile is used to run basic mathematical operations and the other two store one bit of memory each. That makes this chip a simple 2-bit adder without any regular CMOS transistors. Yes, its a far cry from all but the most primitive CPUs, but the team believes this design can be scaled up simply by adding more nanowires to a larger grid of contacts. Four tiles would create a 4-bit adder array, for example.

This isnt the first time nanowires have been investigated as a way to circumvent the limits of Moores law, but the issues inherent with material at this scale have prevented it from being practical. Placing nanowires with the necessary level of precision is extremely difficult, and if a wire comes in contact with another one, it shorts out and knocks out all the transistor nodes down the line. Lieber and his team solved this problem with a technique dubbed deterministic nanocombing.

Before applying the nanowires, the substrate that will form the base of the chip is coated in a thin film of photoresist. Next up, narrow slots are carved out using electron-beam lithography. The slots are where nanowires are intended to go, but they wont just slot themselves in. They almost do, though. The wires (which have already been grown on a different substrate) are chemically treated so they will stick to the exposed silicon oxide surface in the slots. Then the nanowire-encrusted substrate is dragged across the chip and the wires are deposited. The rest of the resist can be removed after the nanowires are situated.

The circuits built with this process are small and very low-power, which makes them ideal for implantable devices like real-time biosensors. Imagine a tiny device that could be implanted under the skin to monitor blood glucose levels in diabetic patients, but uses virtually no power. The same properties could make nanowire chips perfect for advanced microcontrollers in robots. Lieber doesnt see nanowires as a replacement for transistors in large-scale CPUs, but as a way to make processors far smaller and faster than silicon could ever scale.

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Molecular Medicine SpA : Update on the registration …

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02/03/2014 | 04:20pm US/Eastern

PRESS RELEASE

MolMed provides an update on the registration strategy for its gene therapy TK in Europe and in the United States

Milan (Italy), 3 February 2014 - MolMed S.p.A. (Milan:MLM) today provided an update on the registration strategy for its gene therapy TK in Europe and in the US.

With regard to the Conditional Approval procedure in EU, after two meetings with the national agencies from rapporteur and co-rapporteur member states designated by the European Medicines Agency (EMA), the Company confirms the expected filing date of the application in the first quarter of 2014. As far as the Breakthrough Therapy submission is concerned, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has not - at this time - granted the designation for the cell therapy TK as adjunctive treatment in hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) for adult patients affected by high risk acute leukaemia. However, the FDA indicates that the Company can submit a new request once new clinical evidence becomes available. According to this suggestion, MolMed intends to re-apply for Breakthrough Therapy designation in the US since new evidence is now becoming available, including initial efficacy data from the ongoing Phase III clinical trial. These data will be submitted for presentation at next meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO).

About Breakthrough Therapy

Breakthrough Therapy designation is a new regulatory option available at FDA and is intended to expedite the development and review of drugs for serious or life-threatening conditions. The criteria for breakthrough therapy designation require preliminary clinical evidence that demonstrates the drug may have substantial improvement on at least one clinically significant endpoint over available therapy. A breakthrough therapy designation conveys all of the fast track program features as well as more intensive FDA guidance on an efficient drug development program. Details of these regulatory processes can be found at this link: http://www.fda.gov/RegulatoryInformation/Legislation/FederalFoodDrugandCosmeticActFDCAct/SignificantA mendmentstotheFDCAct/FDASIA/ucm341027.htm The last update provided by the FDA on Dec 31st 2013 shows that only 2 requests have been granted out of the 22 submitted.

About TK

TK is a cell therapy product, based on the use of genetically engineered donor T cells carrying a "suicide gene". These cells are administered to patients during the haematopoietic stem cell transplantation for the treatment of high risk leukaemia. TK therapy allows to eliminate the post-transplant immunosuppression treatment thus accelerating the immune reconstitution and controlling the immunological consequences arising from the genetic differences with the donor, known as Graft versus Host Disease (GvHD).

About Phase III trial TK008

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Pop Syd: Adventures in YouTube

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Hey there, Towson. My name is Sydney Adamson and Im back for another semester to give you my thoughts on whatever pop-culture topic is currently at the forefront of my mind.

If you read POPSyd last semester, youll know that I have mentioned (once, twice maybe 10 times) that I love YouTube. Most of the time I prefer watching YouTube videos to watching TV.

Just as one would become invested in a TV show, I have become invested in certain YouTube channels. FunForLouis is one of those channels.

But unlike a TV show, all the videos on FunforLouis are filmed, edited and uploaded to the channel by one person Louis Cole.

Cole has always been an adventurous YouTuber. His earliest YouTube videos were of him eating strange and often disgusting foods, and were posted on his first channel, FoodForLouis.

In 2012, Cole created a second YouTube channel to share vlogs (video blogs) of his travels, which is how FunForLouis was born.

Coles travel videos always prove to be interesting, well filmed and intriguingly edited. Cole does not simply film himself hanging out with friends or lying in the sun on vacation using his cell phone camera.

No, his life is a bit more exciting than that, as is his filming equipment.

Originally from England, Cole and his cameras have traveled across cities, countries, and continents. Just last year, he visited Australia, France, Uganda, Switzerland, Romania, New Zealand, the United States, Canada and more.

To document his adventures, Cole uses a small GoPro camera, a point and shoot camera and a DSLR camera.

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Pop Syd: Adventures in YouTube

Entourage Yearbooks Launches Smartphone App to Address Most Difficult Aspect of Creating a Yearbook

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Princeton, NJ (PRWEB) February 06, 2014

While surveying yearbook advisors, Entourage Yearbooks found that gathering photos is believed to be the most difficult aspect of creating a yearbook. Many advisors depend on teachers, parents and students to take pictures at all of the events throughout the school year, and to submit them in a timely manner to the yearbook staff. Entourage Yearbooks has created a new Smartphone app to make submitting photos as easy as possible.

"We created the app with the entire school community in mind," said Entourage Yearbooks President, Elias Jo. "Getting everyone involved in taking and uploading photos will not only make the yearbook process easier for the yearbook advisor and staff, but will also result in a broader representation of the school year."

In the past, using photos from Smartphones was often discouraged as they often resulted in pixilated or poorly lit photographs. Over the last year, phone manufacturers have started including such technologically advanced cameras in phones that the print quality of pictures taken with most Smartphones and submitted at their full resolution no longer remains an issue.

The Entourage Yearbooks Smartphone App is simple to use and will soon be available for all school yearbooks working with Entourage. The app allows the user to upload pictures directly into pre-created folders on the school's yearbook website hosted by Entourage Yearbooks. Once uploaded, the yearbook advisor has access to all of the photos.

"It's as easy as posting a photo on Facebook or Google+," said Jo. "Having the app set up on a phone will cut out a few steps like searching for the school's name, or filling out login information to access the website. The simplicity of the process, and it's similarity to other popular interfaces should encourage more members of the school community to submit photos. More photos means easier and more awesome yearbooks!"

Entourage Yearbooks plans to announce the official launch date of the app within the coming months.

About Entourage Yearbooks: Founded in 2006, Entourage Yearbooks provides yearbooks to over 3,000 schools across the US and in 18 countries around the world. Entourages unique collaborative yearbook technologies and industry leading production times has made the company one of the fastest growing in the country, recently recognized by Inc. Magazine as the 17th fastest growing private education company in the US. For more information about Entourage Yearbooks, visit http://www.entourageyearbooks.com.

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Entourage Yearbooks Launches Smartphone App to Address Most Difficult Aspect of Creating a Yearbook

FAQ About Texila American University, Medicine & Nursing Programs, About Guyana – Video

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FAQ About Texila American University, Medicine Nursing Programs, About Guyana
http://www.tauedu.org/youtube/signup.html) Texila American University, best medical university in Caribbean is well known for academic excellence and the ac...

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About TAU’s College of Medicine & College of Nursing Programs, About Texila American University – Video

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About TAU #39;s College of Medicine College of Nursing Programs, About Texila American University
http://www.tauedu.org/youtube/signup.html) Texila American University is one of the best medical universities in Caribbean offers on-campus programs like Do...

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About TAU's College of Medicine & College of Nursing Programs, About Texila American University - Video