Manchester scientists have found that gentle heating of targeted nano-sized drug parcels more effectively in deliver them to tumour cells - resulting in an improvement in survival rates.

One of the clinically-established methods for the delivery of cancer chemotherapy drugs has been to package the drug inside nano-sized containers, known as liposomes. This allows the drug to more effectively localise into cancer tissue and reduces side-effects by limiting drug-infused liposome uptake in healthy cells.

The effectiveness of these liposomes has been further improved by engineering them to contain molecules (monoclonal antibodies) on their surface that allow them to better target cancer cells in combination to making them temperature-sensitive so that they release their therapeutic drug content upon mild heating.

Researchers from the Nanomedicine Laboratory at The University of Manchester - part of the Manchester Cancer Research Centre - looked at the benefits of combining both active targeting and temperature-triggered release.

Professor Kostas Kostarelos, who led the research, said: "We have previously seen promising results from this combination approach on a petri dish, but no study had yet investigated its potential in living tissue."

The team compared liposomes with and without the ability to actively target cancer cells. They found that in combination with mild heating, the actively targeted liposomes showed greater uptake in tumour tissue in mice than those without targeting ability.

This resulted in a moderate improvement in the animals' survival.

"We have successfully developed heat-activated and antibody-targeted liposomes to show that they are chemically and structurally stable. This approach may help us develop novel mechanistic strategies to improve targeted drug delivery and release within tumour tissue, while better sparing normal cells," added Professor Kostarelos.

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Heating targeted cancer drugs increases uptake in tumor cells

To improve lithium-sulfur batteries, researchers added glass cage-like coating and graphene oxide

IMAGE:This is a schematic illustration of the process to synthesize silica-coated sulfur particles. view more

Credit: UC Riverside

RIVERSIDE, Calif. -- Lithium-sulfur batteries have been a hot topic in battery research because of their ability to produce up to 10 times more energy than conventional batteries, which means they hold great promise for applications in energy-demanding electric vehicles.

However, there have been fundamental road blocks to commercializing these sulfur batteries. One of the main problems is the tendency for lithium and sulfur reaction products, called lithium polysulfides, to dissolve in the battery's electrolyte and travel to the opposite electrode permanently. This causes the battery's capacity to decrease over its lifetime.

Researchers in the Bourns College of Engineering at the University of California, Riverside have investigated a strategy to prevent this "polysulfide shuttling" phenomenon by creating nano-sized sulfur particles, and coating them in silica (SiO2), otherwise known as glass.

The work is outlined in a paper, "SiO2 - Coated Sulfur Particles as a Cathode Material for Lithium-Sulfur Batteries," just published online in the journal Nanoscale. In addition, the researchers have been invited to submit their work for publication in the Graphene-based Energy Devices special themed issue in RSC Nanoscale.

Ph.D. students in Cengiz Ozkan's and Mihri Ozkan's research groups have been working on designing a cathode material in which silica cages "trap" polysulfides having a very thin shell of silica, and the particles' polysulfide products now face a trapping barrier - a glass cage. The team used an organic precursor to construct the trapping barrier.

"Our biggest challenge was to optimize the process to deposit SiO2 - not too thick, not too thin, about the thickness of a virus", Mihri Ozkan said.

Graduate students Brennan Campbell, Jeffrey Bell, Hamed Hosseini Bay, Zachary Favors, and Robert Ionescu found that silica-caged sulfur particles provided a substantially higher battery performance, but felt further improvement was necessary because of the challenge with the breakage of the SiO2 shell.

Excerpt from:

Glass coating improves battery performance

Dr. Emily Hunt, Trent Kelly and Benton Allen worked in the Energetic Materials Laboratory using combustion synthesis to create different versions of the alloy for the project.

Emily Hunt, Director and Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering, is the first of West Texas A&M University faculty member to have research accepted for commercialization. WT, the Texas A&M University System and Dr. Hunt signed a patent, giving permission for Aggie Venture Partners to license this invention for commercialization on Jan. 27.

Angela Spaulding, Vice President for Research and Compliance said Aggie Venture Partners selected to pursue the Antimicrobial Nano Alloy (ANA) license because it could be commercialized across a wide-ranging variety of industries and result in a greater return on investment.

Hunt describes Antimicrobial Nano Alloy as a mixture of nano-scale materials that act as a structural coating that prevents bacteria from reproducing. It can be applied on many different kinds of surfaces such as metal, plastic or ceramic. It kills bacteria using nanoparticles of silver.

I have been working for several years using combustion synthesis to make new materials, Hunt said. I wanted to be able to use my engineering research to help people. Nanosilver has been used forever to fight bacteria even when we didnt know that is what we were using. So, I developed a material that is both structural and antibacterial.

Hunt composed the initial proof of theoretical experiments to insure that the nanoparticles of silver were safe enough to use in application. Then Hunt recruited senior Mechanical Engineering majors, Trent Kelly and Benton Allen to construct antibacterial paint as well as investigate how to coat sand particles with ANA for use in clean water systems worldwide.

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Dr. Hunt signs patent rights for commercialization

Nigel Marple

"NANO GIRL": Michelle Dickinson is a perfect example of a millennial woman.

When a computer advised a young Michelle Dickinson to be a fish farmer when she grew up, she did the only sensible thing: she grew up to be a bio engineer - albeit unintentionally.

"I found that totally by accident at a university open day," Dickinson says.

"It wasn't until I finished my PhD in biomaterials engineering that I had a clearer idea about where I wanted my career to go and I had been in university for eight years by then."

The self-starter went on to found New Zealand's first nanomechanical research laboratory after gaining a PhD from Rutgers University in the United States and a Masters in biomedical materials engineering from Manchester University.

Now she holds down a senior lecturer position at the University of Auckland's engineering department, writes her own science blog, Nano Girl, and squeezes in regular television appearances with TV3's Firstline Breakfast and 3rd Degree.

The high-energy millennial woman also counts adventure sports as a favourite pastime and at one stage planned to be the first woman to kitesurf under the Auckland Harbour Bridge until bad weather put paid to that idea.

According to new research by PricewaterhouseCoopers, Dickinson is the type of woman more women want to be like, with millennial women - those born between 1980 and 1995 - more ambitious than any other generation.

The survey of nearly 9000 women from 75 countries found more are highly educated, are entering the workforce in unprecedented numbers and have "entirely new career mindsets".

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Self-confidence sets millennial women apart

11 hours ago by Denis Paiste MIT electrical engineering graduate student Farnaz Niroui works in a glovebox, where she prepares a sample for deposition of gold. The glovebox is attached through a transfer line to a thermal evaporator that deposits the gold coating onto squeezable switches, or squitches, which Niroui designs, fabricates, and tests in the Organic and Nanostructured Electronics Lab at MIT. Credit: Denis Paiste/Materials Processing Center

A longstanding problem in designing nanoscale electromechanical switches is the tendency for metal-to-metal contacts to stick together, locking the switch in an "on" position. MIT electrical engineering graduate student Farnaz Niroui has found a way to exploit that tendency to create electrodes with nanometer-thin separations. By designing a cantilever that can collapse and permanently adhere onto a support structure during the fabrication process, Niroui's process leaves a controllable nanoscale gap between the cantilever and electrodes neighboring the point of adhesion.

Niroui, who works in Professor Vladimir Bulovi's Organic and Nanostructured Electronics Laboratory (ONE Lab), presented her most recent findings Jan. 20 at the IEEE Micro Electro Mechanical Systems (MEMS) Conference in Portugal. MIT collaborators include professors Jeffrey Lang in electrical engineering and Timothy M. Swager in chemistry. Their paper is titled "Controlled Fabrication of Nanoscale Gaps Using Stiction."

Stiction, as permanent adhesion is called, is a very important challenge in electromechanical systems and often results in device failure. Niroui turned stiction to her advantage by using a support structure to make nanoscale gaps. "Initially the cantilever is fabricated with a relatively larger gap which is easier to fabricate, but then we modulate the surface adhesion forces to be able to cause a collapse between the cantilever and the support. As the cantilever collapses, this gap reduces to width much smaller than patterned," she explains.

"We can get sub-10-nanometer gaps," she says. "It's controllable because by choosing the design of the cantilever, controlling its mechanical properties and the placement of the other electrodes, we can get gaps that are different in size. This is useful not only for our application, which is in tunneling electromechanical switches, but as well for molecular electronics and contact-based electromechanical switches. It's a general approach to develop nanoscale gaps."

Niroui's latest work builds on her earlier work showing a design for a squeezable switchor "squitch"which fills the narrow gap between contacts with an organic molecular layer that can be compressed tightly enough to allow current to tunnel, or flow, from one electrode to another without direct contactthe "on" positionbut that will spring back to open a gap wide enough that current cannot flow between electrodesthe "off" position. The softer the filler material is, the less voltage is needed to compress it. The goal is a low-power switch with repeatable abrupt switching behavior that can complement or replace conventional transistors.

Niroui designed, fabricated, tested, and characterized the cantilevered switch in which one electrode is fixed and the other moveable with the switching gap filled with a molecular layer. She presented her initial findings at the IEEE MEMS Conference in San Francisco last year in a paper titled, "Nanoelectromechanical Tunneling Switches Based on Self-Assembled Molecular Layers." "We're working right now on alternative designs to achieve an optimized switching performance," Niroui says.

"For me, one of the interesting aspects of the project is the fact that devices are designed in very small dimensions," Niroui adds, noting that the tunneling gap between the electrodes is only a few nanometers. She uses scanning electron microscopy at the MIT Center for Materials Science and Engineering to image the gold-coated electrode structures and the nanogaps, while using electrical measurements to verify the effect of the presence of the molecules in the switching gap.

Building her switch on a silicon/silcon-oxide base, Niroui added a top layer of PMMA, a polymer that is sensitive to electron beams. She then used electron beam lithography to pattern the device structure and wash away the excess PMMA. She used a thermal evaporator to coat the switch structure with gold. Gold was the material of choice because it enables the thiolated molecules to self-assemble in the gap, the final assembly step.

For the initial tunneling current demonstration, Niroui used an off-the-shelf molecule in the gap between electrodes. Work is continuing with collaborators in Swager's chemistry lab to synthesize new molecules with optimal mechanical properties to optimize the switching performance.

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Squeezable nano electromechanical switches with quantum tunneling function

Auburn, MA (PRWEB) March 05, 2015

With the 2014 acquisition of Nelson Air Bearing Products of New Hampshire, PI is building on over 200 man-years of in-house air bearing experience to offer linear, planar XY, and rotary air bearing stages to serve both the research and industrial markets. PI offers comprehensive precision air bearing motion control and positioning products and systems, which are inherently frictionless, for smooth accurate motion. Maximum performance of precision systems is achieved thru extensive design and analysis expertise, using equipment built in-house with proprietary techniques.

Learn more about PI Air Bearing Systems: http://www.pi-usa.us/products/Air_Bearing_Stages/index.php?onl_prweb

Why Air Bearings? As opposed to mechanical bearings, air-bearing positioners literally float on air, providing completely frictionless motion resulting in negligible hysteresis or reversal error, better straightness, flatness and velocity stability, which are ideal prerequisites for high-end industrial inspection and manufacturing operations. Similar motion quality can only be provided by magnetic levitation systems and flexure guided piezo systems, both technologies that PI also offers.

Extension of Existing Nanopositioning Capabilities With 4 decades of experience in piezo nanopositioning systems design and motorized precision positioning equipment, the new air bearing systems capabilities are a natural and logical extension of PI's precision motion offerings.

PI is now in the unique position to cover the whole motion range from finger-tip sized nano-positioners to large scale stages with long travel ranges, through a plethora of different drive and guiding systems tailored exactly to the customer's needs.

About PI USA PI is a leading manufacturer of precision motion control equipment, piezo motors, air bearing stages and hexapod parallel-kinematics for semiconductor applications, photonics, bio-nano-technology and medical engineering. PI has been developing and manufacturing standard & custom precision products with piezoceramic and electromagnetic drives for 4 decades.

Globally, PI employs more than 800 people. PI USA is certified by ISO 9001:2008, ISO 14001:2004, OHSAS 18001: 2007 and ITAR TCP, DoS registered, and provides innovative, high-quality solutions for OEM and research.

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New Air Bearing Stages / Systems Showcasing at Automate 2015 by PI

The Nano Brainiacs from the J-STEM Academy made their first venture into the First Lego League competition and came away with a trophy and an invitation to a second round of competition.

J-STEM, the Judson Independent School Districts science, technology, engineering and mathematics academy, is in its first year of existence on the Judson Middle School campus and chose to enter the First Lego League robotics competition.

Nano Brainiacs coach Joseph Jacobson brought a team of eight sixth-graders to the Feb. 7 competition at Rolling Meadows Elementary School, as Judson played host to a qualifying tournament for the first time.

Teams advance from a qualifying round to a regional event before advancing to the Alamo Regions fifth annual championships, set for March 11-14 and is being sponsored by Rackspace Hosting.

Jacobsons Nano Brainiacs walked away from the qualifier with the Best Innovation Trophy for its efforts in the four-part event, which included a Lego robotics table-top competition, a problem-solving project, a programming demonstration, and a design explanation and analysis session.

The Nano Brainiacs created an innovative way of learning Spanish that immersed the learner into a dynamic way of practicing and reinforcing the language.

Jacobson said J-STEM sent two teams. His team was composed of eight members who learned all required tasks, but learned to specialize as well.

Our team, were a diverse group, Jacobson said. Everybody has a pivotal role. I dont have just one key driver, everybody has to be a driver, and change roles on a dime. I make sure that on each round, were using two different programmers each time, so everybody gets an opportunity.

Nano Brainiac members Jessica Cavazos, Kiara Martinez and Isabella Avellanet discussed their experiences in early qualifying rounds, as each team gets three rounds to accumulate as many points as possible in the table-top competition.

Were going to try to do the same tasks again. They are going to try to do the door, to make sure it works, Martinez said. At first, it wasnt going very well, but the second time, we felt very confident and did very well.

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Students turn Legos into robots

Our bodies have a habit of scattering medicine to the wrong places, so Adah Almutairi is targeting diseases with light-activated nanoparticles

What medical challenge does your nano-engineering address? Biology operates at the nanoscale, so materials designed at that size can respond better to disease. Right now, we have very little control of where, when and how drugs act in the body. We want these processes to work precisely, so that there are no off-target drug effects.

How are you improving drug targeting? One way is by making materials that respond to inflammation, which underlies lots of major diseases. First we string together molecules called ketals to create polymers, which we build into nanoscale containers that resemble balls of tangled yarn. In trials with mice, we've filled these with drug molecules that the spheres release when inflammation flares up, and stop releasing when it subsides.

What size are these balls? A blood vessel in your thumb is about 1 millimetre across. A single blood cell is about a thousand times thinner. And finally, our nanoparticle is one-thousandth the size of a blood cell.

How can inflammation trigger drug release? The start of inflammation involves the build-up of reactive oxygen species and acidic by-products of metabolism. When there's no acid, the spheres are as stable as a rock, but when they encounter acid, the spheres release their contents.

Can you tell me about the nanospheres you made that open when hit with light? For those we use a similar release mechanism to that of our inflammation model, but we harness near-infrared light rather than acidity to break open the spheres in exactly the right locations. Near-infrared has a useful mix of properties: it can penetrate tissue while keeping a straight path, so it can be precisely targeted.

Have you tried these on people yet? Yes, we started with back-of-the-eye diseases. For these conditions you need regular drug injections into your eye. It's very invasive, and the more injections you have, the greater your risk of scarring and retinal damage. You also need a skilled surgeon: not just anyone can poke you in the eye. So there's a big need for a single injection that releases therapeutics over time. We began using our nanospheres to encapsulate a small molecule that treats age-related macular degeneration. When you shine light into the eye, you release a dose of the drug. The spheres can stay in place for a year before safely degrading.

How else could these nanospheres be used? We want to do the same thing with diabetes. So instead of someone with the disease having to stab themselves with insulin when they finish a meal, we want them to be able to just shine light on their abdomen or arm. Another thing is light-activated sunscreen. It wouldn't do the chemistry to protect your skin when you apply it, but only when you go into the sun. That would be smarter than having to reapply sunscreen willy-nilly.

This article appeared in print under the headline "Nanohealing at light speed"

Materials chemist and engineer Adah Almutairi is director of the Center for Excellence in Nanomedicine and Engineering at the University of California, San Diego, where her team explores novel material properties

Originally posted here:

My drug-filled nanospheres heal at the speed of light

Its one of those enduring Zen koans of science that weve all grown up with: Light behaves as both a particle and a waveat the same time. Einstein taught us that, so were all generally on board, but to actually understand what it means would require several Ph.D.s and a thorough understanding of quantum physics.

Whats more, scientists have never been able to devise an experiment that documents light behaving as both a wave and a particle simultaneously. Until now.

Why Should We Care About Quantum Computing?

Thats the contention of a team of Swiss and American researchers, who say theyve succeeded in capturing the first-ever snapshot of lights dual behavior. Using an advanced electron microscope one of only two on the planet at the EPFL labs in Switzerland, the team has generated a kind of quantum photograph of light behaving as both a particle and a wave.

The experiment involves firing laser light at a microscopic metallic nanowire, causing light to travel as a wave back and forth along the wire. When waves traveling in opposite directions meet, they form a standing wave that emits light itself as particles. By shooting a stream of electrons close to the nanowire, the researchers were able to capture an image that simultaneously demonstrates both the wave-nature and particle-nature of light.

Extraordinary Beauty Of The NanoArt World: Photos

This experiment demonstrates that, for the first time ever, we can film quantum mechanics and its paradoxical nature directly, says lead researcher Fabrizio Carbone of EPFL, on the labs project page. The study is to be officially published this week in the journal Nature Communications.

The image provided is shown above, issued with the following caption from EPFL: Energy-space photography of light confined on a nanowire, simultaneously showing both spatial interference and energy quantization. If you find it all a little hard to unpack believe me, Im entirely sympathetic the team has also released this rather friendly companion video:

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Photo First: Light Captured as Both Particle and Wave

A prototype quantum radar that has the potential to detect objects which are invisible to conventional systems has been developed by an international research team led by a quantum information scientist at the University of York.

The new breed of radar is a hybrid system that uses quantum correlation between microwave and optical beams to detect objects of low reflectivity such as cancer cells or aircraft with a stealth capability. Because the quantum radar operates at much lower energies than conventional systems, it has the long-term potential for a range of applications in biomedicine including non-invasive NMR scans.

The research team led by Dr Stefano Pirandola, of the Universitys Department of Computer Science and the York Centre for Quantum Technologies, found that a special converter a double-cavity device that couples the microwave beam to an optical beam using a nano-mechanical oscillator was the key to the new system.

The device can either generate microwave-optical entanglement (during the signal emission) or convert a microwave into an optical beam (during the collection of the reflection beams from the object). The research is published in Physical Review Letters.

A conventional radar antenna emits a microwave to scan a region of space. Any target object would reflect the signal to the source but objects of low reflectivity immersed in regions with high background noise are difficult to spot using classical radar systems. In contrast, quantum radars operate more effectively and exploit quantum entanglement to enhance their sensitivity to detect small signal reflections from very noisy regions.

Dr Pirandola said that while quantum radars were some way off, they would have superior performance especially at the low-photon regime.

Such a non-invasive property is particularly important for short-range biomedical applications. In the long-term, the scheme could be operated at short distances to detect the presence of defects in biological samples or human tissues in a completely non-invasive fashion, thanks to the use of a low number of quantum-correlated photons.

Our method could be used to develop non-invasive NMR spectroscopy of fragile proteins and nucleic acids. In medicine, these techniques could potentially be applied to magnetic resonance imaging, with the aim of reducing the radiation dose absorbed by patients.

Dr Pirandola was funded by the Leverhulme Trust and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council.

For more information, visit http://www.cs.york.ac.uk/.

Original post:

New Research Signals Big Future For Quantum Radar

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday dedicated to the nation the Centre for Nano Science Engineering at the Indian Institute of Science in Bengaluru.

The Centre is designed to provide research and technology leadership in the areas of nano-electronics and nanotechnology, which is key to the 'Make in India' initiative, in the field of electronics.

The Prime Minister unveiled the foundation stone of the Centre for Brain Research at IISc. This is being established as an autonomous centre of IISc.

The Prime Minister witnessed the signing of an MoU between ONGC and M/s Super Wave Technology Pvt Ltd. The MoU envisages development of new technology for drilling of oil and gas.

Union Ministers Sadananda Gowda, Ananth Kumar, and Dharmendra Pradhan were present.

The Prime Minister was given an overview of the research activities being carried out at IISc. He took keen interest in initiatives in areas such as solar energy, water management, agriculture and enquired about collaborations between IISc and other institutes.

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PM visits Indian Institute of Science in Bengaluru

7 hours ago Real-time observation of CNC tensile tests and SIM images of variations in the coil geometry over time. Credit: Toyohashi University of Technology

Carbon nanocoils (CNCs) composed of helical shaped carbon nanofibers have potential applications including mechanical springs and nano-solenoids. There are some reports which measure the spring constant of CNCs.

However, the CNC response to prolonged stretching, which includes initial elastic elongation to large-scale deformation in the plastic regime and subsequent tensile fracture followed by post-fracture contraction and the release of the applied strain, remains undetermined. It is crucially important to secure real-time measurements of CNC deformation beyond the linear elastic regime.

Here, Taiichiro Yonemura and colleagues at Toyohashi University of Technology describe the real-time deformation data that exhibited sequential change in CNC geometry after each coil was subjected to a uniaxial load at a constant rate.

CNC tensile tests were conducted as follows: The CNCs were installed into an FIB system with a tungsten (W) probe with a 500 nm tip diameter and the W probe moved until it adhered to CNC using Pt ion beam whereas the Si ion beam cut the CNC bottom; then the CNC-adhered W probe approaches a spring table substrate surface, until the CNC was almost perpendicularly to the substrate. The tensile tests were performed on nine CNCs by gradually changing the distance between the substrate and W probe.

The real-time data of a CNC tensile test performed using a spring table in the FIB chamber was monitored. A series of three scanning ion microscopy (SIM) images offers visualization of the geometric evolution of the CNC under a tensile load. These images were captured in the free state (t = 0 s), the maximum elongation point (t = 910 s), and a post-fracture state (t = 960 s).

To determine the elastic boundary of the CNCs, we examined the relationship between the applied strain and residual elongation ratios of CNCs after the load release. The result indicates that the CNCs were in the elastic region for elongations up to approximately 15% strain.

Tensile tests, performed on nine different CNCs, revealed that the average CNC spring constant was 1.8 N/m. Using a theoretical equation for the design of macroscopic springs, the shear moduli of the nine CNCs were estimated to be 6 GPa on average. These results may serve as a milestone for developing CNC-based applications in the future.

Explore further: Scientists apply new graph programming method for evolving exascale applications

More information: Taiichiro Yonemura, Yoshiyuki Suda, Hiroyuki Shima, Yasushi Nakamura, Hideto Tanoue, Hirofumi Takikawa, Hitoshi Ue, Kazuki Shimizu, and Yoshito Umeda, Real-time deformation of carbon nanocoils under axial loading, Carbon, 83, 183-187 (2015). dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.carbon.2014.11.034

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Monitoring the real-time deformation of carbon nanocoils under axial loading

Nano particles can be exploited for drug, DNA, and vaccine delivery in cells, diagnosis, and tissue engineering, Subbu S. Venkatraman of the Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, said at the international conference on Nanotoxicology.

He pointed out that being smaller, the nanoparticles could distribute and reach the specific target easily besides enhancing the effect of drugs. The Department of Chemistry and Biosciences of the Srinivasa Ramanujan Centre of the SASTRA University hosted the two-day conference that concluded on Saturday.

Mr. Venkatraman said that worldwide, so far 36 nanoproducts and 23 drug delivery products had been approved.

Dr. Kha Chen Yang James from the National University of Singapore spoke on exploiting non-specific adsorption of nanoparticles for biomedical applications wherein he explained the strategy of gold nano particle modification for their stability and effective delivery of nano drug. Gold nanoparticle could be coupled with other nanoparticles along with drug and that complex could be used effectively to treat cancer, he said.

During another session P. Gopinath of Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee, spoke on the significant role of nanoparticles in managing various types of cancer. He described the least toxicity of nanoparticles that compared favourably with the existing drugs.

Dean Prof. K.G. Raghunathan, Head, Department of Chemistry and Biosciences, Dr. T. Jeyadoss, and convener of the conference Dr. S. Sudheer Khan spoke.

Over 100 research students and professors from various institutions presented research findings in the diverse field of nanotoxicology.

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Nano particles can reach drugs to cells easily

Molecular machines are nano-scale assemblers that construct themselves and their surroundings into ever more complex structures. Sometimes dubbed "nanotech" in the media, these devices are promising but also widely misunderstood. Here's what separates the science fact from science fiction.

The concepts that underpin this form of nanotechnology have certainly had long enough to percolate through modern science. Richard Feynman first speculated about the idea of "synthesis via direct manipulation of atoms" during a talk called There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom. Looking back, that sparked much of the subsequent thinking about treating atoms and molecules more and more like simple building blocks.

Perhaps most famously, K. Eric Drexler considered the idea of taking the bottom-up manufacturing approach to its atomic extreme in his 1986 book Engines of Creation: The Coming Era of Nanotechnology. There, he posited the idea of a nan-oscale "assembler" that could scuttle around, building copies of itself or other molecular sized objects with atomic control; one which might in turn be able to create larger and more complex structures. A kind of microscopic production line, building products from the most basic ingredients of all. Coming when it did, in the mid-eighties, it felt very much like science fiction.

So much so, in fact, that even Drexler acknowledged that it was prudent to tread carefully in a nano-scale building site. "Imagine such a replicator floating in a bottle of chemicals, making copies of itself," he explains in Engines of Creation. "The first replicator assembles a copy in one thousand seconds, the two replicators then build two more in the next thousand seconds, the four build another four, and the eight build another eight. At the end of ten hours, there are not thirty-six new replicators, but over 68 billion. In less than a day, they would weigh a ton; in less than two days, they would outweigh the Earth; in another four hours, they would exceed the mass of the Sun and all the planets combinedif the bottle of chemicals hadn't run dry long before."

That ruthless efficiency could, Drexler argued, make some nano-robots "superior" to naturally occurring organic beings, at least in an evolutionary sensethough, crucially, not necessarily as valuable. Indeed, he suggested that omnivorous bacteria could out-compete real bacteria, reducing the biosphere to dustor 'grey goo'in a matter of days. That hypothetical end-of-the-world scenario, where nanobots turn our world and us into an amorphous sludge, was as tempting to skeptics as the promise of nanotechnology was to scientists. Still, almost thirty years on we're still here and, while some of us may be a little more ashen of face, we're yet to be submerged in the biological by-product of engineered molecular machines.

Truth is that scientists have been very busy indeed over those past thirty years, creating a host of molecular-sized structures that can manipulate and assemble themselves, move, and even work together. It's not always easy, of coursebuilding at the molecular levels requires atomic accuracybut mercifully chemistry and physics has advanced to a point where it's increasingly possible. And there's a rich pool of molecular machines, some inspired by nature, others by mechanical engineering principles, to show for it.

The majority of successes have been built from DNA molecules. Here, DNA isn't being used to carry genetic information; rather, it's a structural material in its own right. Its four basesadenine, cytosine, guanine and thyminebind more or less strongly to one another depending on how they're paired up along the length of a DNA double helix, allowing scientists to tweak the way in which they join together. "We can direct the associations of molecules through Watson-Crick base pairing. Intermolecular interactions using sticky ends have a well-defined geometry," explains Professor Ned Seeman, a nanotechnologist in the Department of Chemistry at New York University, who's widely regarded as inventing the field of DNA nanotechnology. "DNA is like Lego."

The fundamental building blocks of life already have the features required to fold, join, build and growso they're perfectly suited to building things at the nano-scale. By creating strands of DNA with carefully controlled base sequences, the binding can be specifically tailored so that customized strands can be combined to bind with each other and construct exotic structures. Geometries are first modelled on computers to work out what molecules are required, then the appropriate can be DNA synthesised in order that they can be put togetherjust like a Lego kit.

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What Will the Future of Molecular Manufacturing Really Be Like?

NanoEngineering Corporation develops innovative systems based on high resolution differential mobility analysis with applications in health diagnostics and homeland security. The company is presently developing a new Rapid Reagent-less Detection System. The lab quality system will identify the entire range of biologics including all viruses, known and unknown, proteins, blood gases, electrolytes, and metabolytes.

Thesystem RapidDX 3000 is based on proven technology developed by NanoEngineering, Yale University and the U.S. government. Iteliminates time consuming and costly sample preparation, is portable and has been shown to deliver results in less than an hour. Add to this a price of less than any instrument currently available, inexpensive disposables, and the fact is, there is nothing on the market or in development that can compare. For use in hospitals,first response and miitarytheRapidDX 3000 is the most powerful diagnostic instrument available.

What this means is that for the first time, a new all encompassing diagnostic will be used to detect virus and disease faster, cheaper and better. By collaborating with the U.S. Army Edgewood Chemical and Biologic Center (ECBC) a new age in molecular health research has emerged.

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Nano particles can be exploited for drug, DNA, and vaccine delivery in cells, diagnosis, and tissue engineering, Subbu S. Venkatraman of the Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, said at the international conference on Nanotoxicology.

He pointed out that being smaller, the nanoparticles could distribute and reach the specific target easily besides enhancing the effect of drugs. The Department of Chemistry and Biosciences of the Srinivasa Ramanujan Centre of the SASTRA University hosted the two-day conference that concluded on Saturday.

Mr. Venkatraman said that worldwide, so far 36 nanoproducts and 23 drug delivery products had been approved.

Dr. Kha Chen Yang James from the National University of Singapore spoke on exploiting non-specific adsorption of nanoparticles for biomedical applications wherein he explained the strategy of gold nano particle modification for their stability and effective delivery of nano drug. Gold nanoparticle could be coupled with other nanoparticles along with drug and that complex could be used effectively to treat cancer, he said.

During another session Dr. P. Gopinath of Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee, spoke on the significant role of nanoparticles in managing various types of cancer. He described the least toxicity of nanoparticles that compared favourably with the existing drugs.

Dean Prof. K.G. Raghunathan, Head, Department of Chemistry and Biosciences, Dr. T. Jeyadoss, and convener of the conference Dr. S. Sudheer Khan spoke.

Over 100 research students and professors from various institutions presented research findings in the diverse field of nanotoxicology.

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Originally posted here:

Nano particles can transmit drugs to cells easily, says professor

Nature Publishing Group and the Institute of Electronics of Chinese Academy of Sciences are delighted to announce the launch of Microsystems & Nanoengineering. The online open access, fully peer-reviewed journal will go live on nature.com in March 2015, and will begin accepting submissions in October 2014.

Microsystems & Nanoengineering will publish original research articles and reviews in the latest aspects of Micro and Nano Electro Mechanical Systems (MEMS/NEMS) and nanoengineering relevant to MEMS/NEMS. The journal will cover new design (theory, modelling and simulation), fabrication, characterization, reliability, and applications of devices and systems in micro and nano scales. Nano-engineered MEMS/NEMS will be also within the scope of publication in this journal.

The editorial team is led by the internationally renowned Professor Yirong Wu, together with Professor Tianhong Cui and Professor Ian White. A highly respected editorial board of researchers from across the globe will be working with the editorial team of Microsystems & Nanoengineering and with NPG to further define and shape the research field of Micro and Nano Electro Mechanical Systems.

Read more about the journals Aims & Scope.

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Home : Microsystems & Nanoengineering - Nature Publishing ...

The Joint School of Nanoscience and Nanoengineering (JSNN), is an academic collaboration between North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State Universtity (NC A&T) and The University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG). Located on the South Campus of Gateway University Research Park, JSNN builds on the strengths of the universities to oer innovative, cross-disciplinary graduate programs in the emerging areas of nanoscience and nanoengineering.

JSNN oers four degree programs, a Professional Science Masters (PSM) in Nanoscience, a Ph.D. in Nanoscience, an M.S. in Nanoengineering and a Ph.D. in Nanoengineering. Distance learning options are also in development.

JSNN has six research focus areas:

These technical areas aord numerous opportunities for collaboration with industrial partners.

JSNN is a $56.3 million, 105,000 square foot state-of -the-art science and engineering research building with nanoelectronics and nanobio clean rooms, nanoengineering and nanoscience laboratories and extensive materials analysis facilities. JSNNs characterization capability includes a suite of microscopes from Carl Zeiss SMT, including the only Orion Helium Ion microscope in the southeast. Also a visualization center allows three-dimension imaging for modeling of nanotechnology problems.

JSNN collaborates with Guilford Technical Community College and Forsyth Technical Community College on an internship program that exposes students to the advanced technology at its facility. JSNN also is actively engaged with K-12 outreach with Guilford County Schools.

FOR MORE INFORMATION:

Phone: +1 (336) 285-2800

Web: http://jsnn.ncat.uncg.edu

Twitter: https://twitter.com/#JSNN2907

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The Joint School of Nanoscience & Nanoengineering - North ...

Updated: 02/06/2015 3:37 PM Created: 02/06/2015 3:34 PM WNYT.com By: WNYT Staff

ALBANY - Around 300 students got an eye-opening experience as they attended Nano Career Day at SUNY Polytechnic Institutes College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering on Thursday.

When you think Career Day, you probably think about parents coming into a classroom talking about their jobs.

However, this is nothing like that.

They get a number of tours, science, hands on activities, explained Stephen Stewart with the College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering. The goal is to show them how we turn simple science into complex structures that we use today.

They also demonstrate the value of studying things like thin films and ultraviolet beads.

Right now, we're looking at probably a need for over four million new technology workers.

Now you'll need a masters, but if you go that route, you can make a pretty nice living.

This is one of the complexes that can definitely give them a leg up into jobs that are paying $90,000 to $100,000 range to start.

They make Career Day fun too, like showing the kids how to mix acids and waters and then freaking them out by drinking it. In this case, it turned out to be lemonade.

Read the rest here:

Nano Career Day hopes to inspire kids for a STEM future

The 2015 Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering has been awarded to the ground-breaking chemical engineer Dr Robert Langer for his revolutionary advances and leadership in engineering at the interface with chemistry and medicine. The QEPrize is a global 1 million prize that celebrates the engineers responsible for a ground-breaking innovation that has been of global benefit to humanity.

The announcement was made by Lord Browne of Madingley, Chairman of the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering Foundation, in the presence of His Royal Highness The Duke of York at the Royal Academy of Engineering in London on 3 February. Her Majesty The Queen will present the prize to Dr Langer at Buckingham Palace later this year.

Dr Langer is one of 11 Institute Professors at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, USA. This is MITs highest honor. His laboratory at MIT - with over 100 students, postdoctoral students, and visiting scientists at any one time - is the world's largest academic biomedical engineering laboratory. He has over 1000 issued and pending patents, over 200 major prizes to his name, and he is the most cited engineer in history (Science, 2014). His work has helped lay the foundation for a myriad of health innovations, including the long-lasting brain cancer treatment Giladel Wafer; the prostate cancer and endometriosis treatments Lupron Depot, Zoladex, and Decapeptyl SR; the schizophrenia treatment Respirdal Consta ; the diabetes treatment Bydureon; and the drug-coated cardiovascular stents that alone have benefited 10 million heart patients.

A chemical engineer by training, Dr Langer was the first person to engineer polymers to control the delivery of large molecular weight drugs for the treatment of diseases such as cancer and mental illness. His unconventional thinking toppled the established view that controlled-release drug delivery would not work for large molecules like proteins, which are very sensitive to their surroundings.

From the start, Dr Langers work has been characterized by a truly interdisciplinary approach. He developed his first drug delivery system during the 1970s while working with Dr Judah Folkman, a Harvard professor and surgeon at Boston Children's Hospital. Folkman hypothesized that the growth of cancerous tumors could be restricted by stopping angiogenesis, the formation of new blood vessels, and he asked Langer to find a way to inhibit it. Once he had discovered how to create polymer micro- and nano-particles that could support and release sensitive protein-based drugs in the body, he used this technique to test possible drugs to control angiogenesis. He and Dr Folkman isolated the first substances that blocked angiogenesis; such substances have been used to treat over 20 million patients.

An early application of the controlled release technology was in polymer microspheres that deliver nanopeptide drugs over several months and are now widely used to treat prostate cancer and endometriosis. Similar approaches have led to new treatments for schizophrenia, alcoholism, and drug addiction.

Together with another Harvard surgeon, Dr Joseph Vacanti at Massachusetts General Hospital, Dr Langer helped pave the way for major innovations in tissue engineering, pioneering synthetic polymers that could deliver cells to form specific tissue structures. This concept led to the development of a new kind of artificial skin, now approved by the FDA for use on burn victims and patients with diabetic skin ulcers. Many other such systems, including ones for new cartilage formation and spinal cord repair, are now in clinical trials.

Professor Lord Broers FREng FRS HonFMedSci, Chair of Judges for the QEPrize, said: Robert Langer has made an immense contribution to healthcare and to numerous other fields by applying engineering systems thinking to biochemical problems. Not only has he revolutionized drug delivery, but his open-minded approach to innovation and his ability to think outside the box have led to great advances in the field of tissue engineering. He is a truly inspiring leader who has attracted brilliant people to these relatively new and exciting areas of research and is extremely involved in the commercial development of his groups research."

One of Dr Langers most recent projects is a microchip-based implant capable of storing and releasing precise doses of a drug on-demand or at scheduled intervals for up to 16 years. Microchips, the company he co-founded to commercialize the development, announced in December 2014 that it has completed clinical demonstration. Unlike traditional drug delivery platforms, Microchips Biotech's implant can respond to wireless signals, which can activate, deactivate, or modify the frequency or dose of the drug, without being removed from the patient. The company is looking initially at three areas for such an implant: diabetes, female contraception, and osteoporosis, which all require regular, long-term dosage. The contraceptive approach is funded by the Gates Foundation, as are new ways of providing single-step immunizations for polio and other vaccines, providing long-acting malaria drugs, and providing essential minerals. All of these new techniques are currently being pursued in Dr Langers lab.

This story is reprinted from material from the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering, with editorial changes made by Materials Today. The views expressed in this article do not necessarily represent those of Elsevier. Link to original source.

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Visionary chemical engineer Robert Langer wins the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering