Monthly Archives: March 2014

Nanotechnology site at Electronics Park will move forward

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Salina, N.Y. A proposed nanotechnology facility in Salina that remains vacant 3 1/2 years after it was announced will eventually open despite a new project in the field announced yesterday for DeWitt.

New York said in 2010 it would invest $28 million to transform a former General Electric lab at the park into a facility that will employ up to 250 people.

Those plans haven't changed, said Alain Kaloyeros, CEO of the SUNY College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering in Albany. The focus will be on defense-related work involving nanotechnology, the science of manipulating individual atoms and molecules.

The Nanoscale College is involved in the Electronics Park facility and the new project Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Tuesday at Onondaga County Executive Joanie Mahoney's State of the County address.

Cuomo said the state will spend $15 million to create a nanotech hub at the Collamer Crossings Business Park that will eventually employ 350 people. Its first tenant will be the Film House, a film production company.

The Electronics Park facility should be up and running in 2014, Kaloyeros said.

The building was neglected over the years, which meant it needed major rehab, said Kevin Schwab, a spokesman for CenterState CEO, which manages Electronics Park.

"That process is complete now," he said. "We are ready for construction and development."

Schwab said the governor's announcement of the DeWitt hub shouldn't hurt the Electronics Park site.

"Nanotechnology is a platform that can be applied across a wide range of industries and I think that's what you're seeing here," he said.

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Nanotechnology site at Electronics Park will move forward

Can nanotechnology make better movies?

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DEWITT, N.Y. - If you're looking to blow something up for a major Hollywood blockbuster these days, you might need a dose of science.

Some of the materials used to contain those explosions, and ensure they only blow up the things they're supposed to, are based on nanotechnology.

That's the science of manipulating individual atoms and molecules, said Alain Kaloyeros, CEO of the SUNY College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering.

Those materials and other innovations will take center stage at a new nanotech-focused hub planned for Collamer Crossings Business Park in DeWitt. Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced the project Tuesday.

Other nanotechnology-related advances that could come into play in the movie business include:

The DeWitt hub's first tenant is a film production company called The Film House that will make use of nano-powered moviemaking technology.

The Film House will focus on making movies. Other companies that populate the facility will concentrate on research and development of new technologies, Kaloyeros said.

In addition to the film industry, the hub will try to attract tenants in energy and the medical device sector.

The site will employ 350 people, according to Cuomo. The Nanoscale College will own and manage the facility.

Nanotechnology allows researchers to design new materials from the ground up and imbue them with specific characteristics by altering them at the atomic level, Kaloyeros said.

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Can nanotechnology make better movies?

Nano innovation could mean eye injections are a thing of the past

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Drugs used to treat blindness-causing disorders could be successfully administered by eye drops rather than unpleasant and expensive eye injections, according to new research led by UCL scientists that could be a breakthrough for the millions worldwide suffering from age-related macular degeneration (AMD) and other eye disorders.

1 in 5 people over 75 have AMD with well-known sufferers including actress Dame Judi Dench and author Stephen King. The research findings are significant due to growing patient numbers and an increasing demand for the eye injections that halt the progression of the disease.

The research, demonstrated in animal models and published today in nanotechnology journal Small, demonstrates that it is possible to create formulations of tiny nanoparticles loaded with the AMD drug Avastin and deliver significant concentrations to the back of the eye. Lead author Professor Francesca Cordeiro (UCL Institute of Ophthalmology) said: "The development of eye drops that can be safely and effectively used in patients would be a magic bullet a huge breakthrough in the treatment of AMD and other debilitating eye disorders.

"The current treatment of injecting drugs into the eye is uncomfortable, detested by patients and often needs repeated monthly injections in hospital for as long as 24 consecutive months. It's impossible to exaggerate the relief patients would feel at not having to experience injections into their eyes."

The NHS is currently overburdened with patients who need repeat eye injections and the numbers are set to rise exponentially over the next ten years. Demand is so high that injections are difficult to administer, time-consuming and very expensive. The treatment also carries a risk of infection and bleeding, increased by the frequency of recurrent injections into the eyes. In the USA, well over one million ocular injections were given in 2010. In the UK, 30,500 injections were estimated to have been given in 2008 a 150-fold increase in 10 years.

Effective delivery of drugs to the retina of the eye is considered one of the most challenging areas in drug development in ophthalmology, due to the presence of anatomical barriers. It was previously thought that drugs used to treat AMD such as Avastin and Lucentis have molecules that are simply too large to be effectively transported in an eye drop.

First author Dr Ben Davis (UCL Institute of Ophthalmology) added: "There is significant interest in the development of minimally invasive systems to deliver large drug molecules across biological barriers including the cornea of the eye.

"We have shown in experimental models a formulation system to get substances including Avastin across the barriers in the eye and transport them across the cells of the cornea. In theory, you could customise the technology for different drugs such as Lucentis, commonly used for AMD treatment in the UK, as it is a smaller molecule than Avastin so likely to be delivered effectively via this method.

"All the components we used are safe and well established in the field, meaning we could potentially move quite quickly to get the technology into trials in patients but the timescales are dependent on funding." The paper includes functional data showing that the avastin administered stops the blood vessels from leaking and forming new blood vessels, the basis for wet AMD.

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Nano innovation could mean eye injections are a thing of the past

Cuomo: DeWitt hub for nano industries will create at least 350 high-tech jobs

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SYRACUSE New York Governor Andrew Cuomo on Tuesday night announced plans for a facility in DeWitt that will serve as a hub for emerging nano industries in Onondaga County and its first tenant.

Cuomo made the announcement during his visit for Onondaga County Executive Joanie Mahoneys State of the County address at the Carnegie Library in downtown Syracuse.

The DeWitt facility will specialize in providing advanced visual-production research and education to support upstate New Yorks rapidly growing film and television industry, the governors office said in a news release.

The State University of New York (SUNY) College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering (CNSE) will lead the operation. It will focus on the use of nanotechnology to drive innovations in the computer-generation imagery, animation, and motion-capture technology used in film and television production, Cuomos office said.

Cuomo also announced that The Film House, a Los Angelesbased film and television company, will be the facilitys first tenant. Itll move its headquarters, production, post-production, and distribution operations to DeWitt.

The project will create at least 350 new high-tech jobs and 150 construction jobs, according to the governors office.

The film industry and nanotech sectors are emerging industries, and New York is going to reap the rewards of innovation and high-tech jobs, Cuomo said in the news release.

Were bringing the industries of the future to New York, and Upstate is going to lead the way. The new innovation hub in Onondaga County will be a hotspot for research and education, bringing hundreds of new jobs and hundreds of millions of dollars of investment to Central New York, Cuomo said.

The project is based on a seven-year growth plan that includes a minimum private investment of over $150 million over the seven years, with an initial 125 jobs that will eventually grow to at least 350.

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Cuomo: DeWitt hub for nano industries will create at least 350 high-tech jobs

Carbon Emerges as New Solar Power Material

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Carbon-based photovoltaic devices might one day replace silicon solar cells

Flickr/Jeremy Levine

Researchers are investigating how carbon can harness the sun's light, potentially replacing more expensive and toxic materials used in conventional photovoltaic technologies.

Now a team at Stanford University has developed a solar cell whose components are made solely from carbon. The scientists published their findings last month in the journal ACS Nano.

"We were interested in forming basically a new type of solar cell in which the materials being used are all carbon materials," said Michael Vosgueritchian, a doctoral student in chemical engineering at Stanford and a co-author.

He explained that carbon materials have several traits that make them appealing to energy developers. "There's no fear of running out of carbon," Vosgueritchian said. "These materials, since they are nanomaterials, they are solution processable. They can be deposited by spraying and coating without high temperatures or vacuums."

Contrast this with typical silicon-based solar panels: Manufacturers need very pure silicon and have to heat it to high temperatures. The devices' electrodes often consist of expensive, rare or dangerous elements like cadmium, tellurium and indium. When a photovoltaic panel wears out, these chemicals also create a disposal hazard.

Working under Zhenan Bao at Stanford, Vosgueritchian said, the research team used several flavors of carbon to construct its device. Graphene, a carbon structure in which the atoms lie in thin sheets of hexagons, formed the anode.

If graphene is rolled into a cylinder, it becomes a carbon nanotube. Nanotubes made up part of the device's active layer, which converts light to electricity. On top was a layer of 60-carbon fullerenes, soccer-ball-shaped arrangements of atoms. The final layer was a cathode composed of nanotubes.

'A long way to go' before practical use Michael Strano, a professor of chemical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, explained that this junction between nanotubes and fullerenes "represents a fundamentally new kind of solar cell." His team developed a device using this system and published its work in Advanced Materials in June.

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Carbon Emerges as New Solar Power Material

Enroll now to vote in this election! Here's how

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The last date is March 9, 2014. HURRY!

First-time voters or those who don't have their names on the voters' list or electoral rolls yet, you have time till March 9, 2014 to register yourself with the Election Commission of India and exercise your right to vote in the forthcoming general and assembly elections that begin April 7, 2014.

A step-by-step guide to register as a first time general voter as mentioned on the Election Commission of India Web site.

While you can opt for the traditional offline method of registering as a voter, the Election Commission of India now also offers you an opportunity to register online.

How to register online

You can now register online here: http://eci-citizenservices.nic.in/frmmobileverification.aspx?type=FORM6

Once you proceed with details like your mobile number and e-mail ID, you get a verification code on your mobile phone. After you submit the code you go to Form 6 (see here to get an idea: http://eci.nic.in/eci_main/forms/FORM6.pdf), fill it up online and submit it.

Form 6 answers all the questions first-time voters would have along with a list of documents required you need to scan and upload.

Once you file and upload Form 6 online along with a scanned copy of your photographs, necessary documents to prove your birth date and residential address, the Election Registration Officer will send a booth level officer to check and verify the authenticity of your documents.

After this verification id done without any hitch your name will get registered as a voter in the electoral list.

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Enroll now to vote in this election! Here's how

Internal Medicine 2014 presents latest prevention and treatment information for adult health care

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PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

5-Mar-2014

Contact: Steve Majewski SMajewski@acponline.org American College of Physicians

More than 6,000 internal medicine physicians, subspecialists, medical students, and allied health professionals from around the world will gather in Orlando for Internal Medicine 2014, the annual scientific meeting of the American College of Physicians (ACP), April 10 - 12 (Thursday - Saturday), at the Orange County Convention Center. More than 200 sessions cover a broad array of clinical topics and health care policy issues.

Internal Medicine 2014 also features sessions that look at patient care through different lenses, such as "History of Medical Care through 100 Great Art Works" and "Guidelines or Constitution?: A Vignette from 19th-Century Medical Practice."

For the second consecutive year, ACP is partnering with Consumer Reports to hold a Patient Empowerment Expo. The Orlando area public is invited to come to the Hyatt Regency in Orlando on Saturday, April 12 from 8:00 a.m. to noon to learn about recommended screening tests, medical mistakes to avoid, and how to get the best value for your health care dollar.

"The Expo is part of ACP's High Value Care initiative, which includes helping patients become savvy consumers of what is necessary, beneficial preventive care and what might be unnecessary or even harmful testing," said Molly Cooke, MD, FACP, who is completing her one-year term as ACP's president.

Internal Medicine 2014 includes national abstract competitions for medical students and associate members. Finalists will compete onsite in four categories: Clinical Vignette, Basic Research, Clinical Research, Quality Improvement - Patient Safety. Oral presentations take place on April 11 and 12. Winners of the poster competitions will be announced on April 12 at 6:30 p.m.

On April 12 at 5:15 p.m., Internal Medicine 2014 Highlights and the final round of Doctor's Dilemma take place. Clinician-educators will share what they think are Internal Medicine 2014's most important take-home messages. Then the "Final Four" teams remaining in the Doctor's Dilemma competition -- a fast-paced, Jeopardy-style medical knowledge competition among students and residents -- will face off in the championship round. The winning team takes home the Osler Cup -- ACP's coveted trophy. This year marks the 20th anniversary of the Doctor's Dilemma. The competition was the idea of ACP's Florida chapter in 1994.

During Internal Medicine 2014, David Fleming, MD, FACP, will become president of ACP and Robert Centor, MD, FACP will become chair of ACP's Board of Regents. Both terms are for one year.

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Internal Medicine 2014 presents latest prevention and treatment information for adult health care