By Ed Monk for Thisismoney.co.uk

Published: 08:25 EST, 4 January 2015 | Updated: 08:26 EST, 4 January 2015

We round up the latest share tips from the Sunday newspaper. This week,Midatech, Michelmersh, Hayward Tyler, Prezzo & the Restaurant Group.

Paper profits: What is Fleet Street tipping?

Mail on Sunday

Midas starts 2015 by outlining some of the keys risks to stock market performance in the coming year, and offers three very different tips.

Midatech Pharma floated on AIM only last month and specialises in nano-technology, using tiny particles of pure gold to treat cancer, diabetes and other medical conditions.

The shares are 264p and should gain ground, as the boards members are ambitious, experienced and have a history of success.

The Oxford-based company has developed two innovative processes in the healthcare field. The first uses gold nano-particles to make cancer treatments work more effectively.

When the nano-particles are combined with existing drugs, chemotherapy becomes much more targeted, so it attacks the cancer and not the healthy tissue around it.

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SUNDAY NEWSPAPER SHARE TIPS: Midatech, Michelmersh, Hayward Tyler, Prezzo & the Restaurant Group.

(PRWEB) December 31, 2014

The report states that the global nano cellulose market will reach market value worth US$250 million by the end of 2020 in North America.

View Full Report at http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/analysis/235020

The report studies the types, properties, production, and the advantages of the market. It also examines the various nano cellulose market segments minutely on the basis of the applications, usage in various markets, and regions.

The nano cellulose market is classified on the basis of applications into Nanocrystalline cellulose, Nanofibrillar cellulose, and Bacterial cellulose. The development in the production of nano cellulose in the previous years has been majorly driven by the escalating costs of petroleum and the high energy intenseness in synthetic polymers and chemicals production. At present, there is a considerable amount of research on nano-structured cellulose, and commercial development is now in progress with some potential applications. By using the appropriate extraction and conversion technologies as well as modification and characterization, micro/nanofibrillar cellulose, nano-crystalline cellulose, and bacterial cellulose can be incorporated into bio-based products.

Download Detail Report With COmplete TOC at http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/sample/sample/235020 Nano cellulose is also being developed for novel usage in various applications ranging from scaffolds in tissue engineering, wound healing, artificial skin and cartilage, and vessel replacements to biodegradable food packaging. Applications in anti-microbial films and polymer reinforcement will soon be introduced in the nano cellulose market.

The report evaluates the global nano cellulose market with the reference of the supply chain, market structure, patenting and publications for the global nano cellulose market. Markets for nano cellulose, which includes electronics, composites, paper and pulp, construction, filtration, paints, medicine and life sciences, coatings, films, aerogels, rheological modifiers, and oil market, are also studies deeply in this report.

Some of the major regions covered in the global nano cellulose market report are North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and Rest of the World. In a segment that analyzes individual geographical regions with extreme detail and precision, the report presents with important insights into the factors that impacts the regional nano cellulose market, eventually making an impact on the global market. Some of the crucial aspects addressed in the report comprise regional nano cellulose market production and production value, capacity, cost and profit assessment, demand, supply and consumption, imports and exports, industry share, and economic impact on different regions.

Explore All Future Markets Inc Market Research Reports at http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/publisher/27 The global nano cellulose market report assists nano cellulose manufacturers, consultants, and every other stakeholder to get a better insight of the market and make a well-researched business decision.

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Marketresearchreports.biz: Commercialization of Nanocellulose to Fuel the Global Nanocellulose Market

Dec. 29, 2014 @ 06:47 AM

MORGANTOWN - West Virginia University's new Advanced Engineering Research Building is on track to open in the fall of 2015.

Associate director of design and construction John Thompson said that construction of the main building is completed. Faculty and staff will begin transi tioning to the new building in the spring.

The four-story building will have offices, classrooms, a learning center and graduate student space. It also will have an 8,000-foot clean room for students working on nano-technology.

A clean room is an environment featuring purified air.

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WVU's new engineering research building set to open in 2015

7 hours ago Aji Mathew assistant professor at Lule University of Technology with her graduate students Peng Liu and Zoheb Karim with prototypes of nano-filters.

Prototypes of nano-cellulose based filters with high purification capacity towards environmentally hazardous contaminants from industrial effluents eg. process industries, have been developed by researchers at Lule University of Technology. The research, conducted in collaboration with Imperial College in the UK has reached a breakthrough with the prototypes and they will now be tested on a few industries in Europe.

"The bio-based filter of nano-cellulose is to be used for the first time in real-life situations and tested within a process industry and in municipal wastewater treatment in Spain. Other industries have also shown interest in this technology and representatives of the mining industry have contacted me and I have even received requests from a large retail chain in the UK," says Aji Mathew Associate Professor, Division of Materials Science at Lule University.

Researchers have combined a cheap residue from the cellulose industry, with functional nano-cellulose to prepare adsorbent sheets with high filtration capacity. The sheets have since been constructed to different prototypes, called cartridges, to be tested. They have high capacity and can filter out heavy metal ions from industrial waters, dyes residues from the printing industry and nitrates from municipal water. Next year, larger sheets with a layer of nano-cellulose can be produced and formed into cartridges, with higher capacity.

"Each such membrane can be tailored to have different removal capability depending on the kind of pollutant, viz., copper, iron, silver, dyes, nitrates and the like," she says.

Behind the research, which is funded mainly by the EU, is a consortium of research institutes, universities, small businesses and process industries. It is coordinated by Lule University led by Aji Mathew. She thinks that the next step is to seek more money from the EU to scale up this technology to industrial level.

"Alfa Laval is very interested in this and in the beginning of 2015, I go in with a second application to the EU framework program Horizon 2020 with goals for full-scale demonstrations of this technology," she says.

Two of Aji Mathews graduate student Peng Liu and Zoheb Karim is also deeply involved in research on nano-filters.

"I focus on how these membranes can filter out heavy metals by measuring different materials such as nanocrystals and nano-fibers to determine their capacity to absorb and my colleague focuses on how to produce membranes," says Peng Liu PhD student in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Lule University of Technology.

Explore further: Nano-paper filter removes viruses

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Nano filter cleans environmentally hazardous industrial byproducts

Speaker: Ellen Kullman, Chair of the Board and Chief Executive Officer, DuPont Presider: Alan S. Murray, Editor, Fortune Magazine December 18, 2014 Council on Foreign Relations

MURRAY: Thank you all for coming. This is going to be a very interesting discussion this morning. I can -- I can tell you already, I think you've all been told to turn off your cell phones. I think would add to that the warning that if -- if you -- if you're thinking of writing any e-mails, assume they will be hacked someday and shown on the Jumbotron at Times Square. So, be careful -- be careful what you put in electronic communications.

Ellen Kullman has been CEO of DuPont since 2009.

KULLMAN: Yes.

MURRAY: DuPont has been around for 212 years.

KULLMAN: Correct.

MURRAY: You had a long and distinguished career at the company, serving as president, executive vice president. You started a life sciences -- Industrial Biosciences. And also the Sustainability Solutions. So, you know the company inside out. We used to think of DuPont as a chemical company. You refer to it as an innovation company. Tell us what you mean.

KULLMAN: Well, we call it a science company, and so, innovation, I think, another company has the corner on that, but...

MURRAY: Oh, really? Can you -- can you trademark something like that?

KULLMAN: I don't know, I don't know...

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CEO Speaker Series: Global Competitiveness and the Innovation Imperative

Daijiworld Media Network - MangaluruWith Inputs from Media Release

Mangaluru, Dec 19: Two budding scientists, students of Sharada Vidyaniketan Public School here, have been selected to represent India in the International Science Fair to be held in the United States of America.

Komal of class XI and Aditya Bhargav of class X, were awarded the gold medal in the national-level Science Fair conducted by The Initiative for Research and Innovation in Science (IRIS) held in Ahmedabad, for their paper on inventing a machine using nano materials that can convert harmful gases in the environment (like carbon monoxide emitted from vehicles and sulfur dioxide emitted from factories) into harmless gases. The event was held from December 4 to 7.

Having bagged the gold medal at the national level, Komal and Aditya are now all set to represent the country in the USA.

In Ahmedabad, the duo presented their project under 'Engineering: Materials and Bioengineering about Smart Nanodevices - Future for clean air and green world'. They were mentored by Ganesh Shastri, faculty of biology at Sharada Vidyaniketan. They were also guided in their experiments by inorganic and physics chemistry and nano sciences and engineering departments of IISC, Bengaluru.

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Two students from Mangaluru to represent India at Science Fair in US

December 17, 2014

Three UC Davis scientists have been elected as 2014 fellows of the National Academy of Inventors, for work ranging from engineering new tissues to mass-producing superior surgical blades. They are: Kyriacos A. Athanasiou, distinguished professor and chair of biomedical engineering; Bruce Hammock, distinguished professor of entomology; and Saif Islam, professor of electrical and computer engineering.

The three professors are UC Davis newest additions to the relatively new National Academy of Inventors. UC Davis has two other members: Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi, elected in the academys inaugural class of fellows, 2012; and Jerry Woodall, distinguished professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, elected in 2013.

The academy announced its 2014 class Dec. 16, bringing the total number of fellows to 414. All are academic inventors who have demonstrated a prolific spirit of innovation in creating or facilitating outstanding inventions that have made a tangible impact on quality of life, economic development, and the welfare of society.

More about UC Davis newest fellows:

Kyriacos A. Athanasiou Department chair and distinguished professor of biomedical engineering, and the Child Family Professor of Engineering, who also has an appointment in the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery. He studies the healing processes of cartilage, and works to augment them via the application of tissue engineering principles. Our approach entails the use of biodegradable scaffolds designed to incorporate suitable bioactive agents and signals to regenerate cartilage, his website states. Hes the recipient of the Marshal Urist Award for Excellence in Tissue Regeneration Research, the Thomas A. Edison Patent Award and a number of innovation awards.

Bruce D. Hammock Distinguished professor of entomology who also has an appointment at the UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center. Most recently, his laboratory found potent enzyme inhibitors that dramatically reduce inflammation, inflammatory pain and neuropathic pain. Compounds are now being tested in two ways: in clinical trials for companion animals, and in the Food and Drug Administrations Pre-Investigational New Drug Application Consultation Program, for the treatment of neuropathic pain in people with diabetes. Hes a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a fellow of the Entomological Society of America.

M. Saif Islam Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and co-director of the Center for Nano and Micro Manufacturing, or CNM2. His research focuses on ultrafast optoelectric devices, molecular electronics, and the integration of semiconductor nanostructures in devices for imaging, sensing, computing and energy conversion. He holds 37 U.S. patents. Hes the co-founder of Atocera, a startup that plans to bring its silicon surgical and razor blades to market as a less expensive alternative to ceramic and diamond blades. Atocera is housed in the College of Engineerings incubator officially known as the Engineering Translational Technology Center.

The induction ceremony for the new fellows is scheduled for March 20 during the academys fourth annual conference, to be held at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena.

UC Davis is a global community of individuals united to better humanity and our natural world while seeking solutions to some of our most pressing challenges. Located near the California state capital, UC Davis has more than 34,000 students, and the full-time equivalent of 4,100 faculty and other academics and 17,400 staff. The campus has an annual research budget of over $750 million, a comprehensive health system and about two dozen specialized research centers. The university offers interdisciplinary graduate study and 99 undergraduate majors in four colleges and six professional schools.

Link:

Three elected to National Academy of Inventors

CERRITOS, CA California Nanotechnologies Corp. (TSX VENTURE: CNO) ("Cal Nano" or the "Company") is pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Enrique Lavernia, Distinguished Professor and Dean of the College of Engineering at the University of California at Davis, to the Board of Directors of California Nanotechnologies Corp. Dr. Lavernia will replace David F. Grant on the Board. Mr. Grant will continue to support the development of the Company as a consultant.

Since the completion of his PhD in Materials Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1986, Dean Lavernia has served in various positions including as Chair and Chancellor's Professor of the Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science at the University of California at Irvine and as Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor of the University of California at Davis. He is a member of several professional organizations and fellowships and serves on various boards of review and advisory panels. In addition to his nine patents, Dean Lavernia has received numerous scholastic awards. He has also been awarded grants from several agencies including the National Science Foundation, the Office of Naval Research, the U.S. Department of Energy, NASA, and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research.

Dean Lavernia will receive 100,000 incentive stock options at a price of $0.11 CAD per share as compensation for joining the Board. The options are governed by the Company's stock option plan as approved at the last annual meeting on October 18, 2013 and as such vest over three years and are exercisable over a term of five years. All options offered by the Company are subject to TSX Venture Exchange (TSX-V) approval.

Dean Lavernia brings to Cal Nano a vast network of contacts and unparalleled expertise in the field of material science. To further support the commercialization of the Company, Dean Lavernia will provide consulting services to develop new and advance existing commercial projects. "The addition of Dean Lavernia to the Cal Nano team will provide additional insight and expertise into the commercial world of Nanotechnology. We look forward to many additional opportunities and commercial successes to come," stated Christopher Melnyk, CEO.

The Company plans to put forward a larger slate of directors at the annual meeting to be held in Calgary this fall. At that time, it will be possible for Mr. David Grant to return to the Board.

Contact Information

For further information, please contact:

Doren Quinton, President QIS Capital T: (250) 377-1182 E: info@smallcaps.ca W: http://www.smallcaps.ca

Andrew Bengis, Chief Financial Officer T: (562) 991-5211 F: (562) 926-6913 E: investorinfo@calnanocorp.com W: http://www.calnanocorp.com

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California Nanotechnologies Appoints Dr. Enrique Lavernia to the Board

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

15-Dec-2014

Contact: Ioana Patringenaru ipatrin@eng.ucsd.edu 858-822-0899 University of California - San Diego @UCSanDiego

A team of researchers from the University of California, San Diego have demonstrated a way to emit and control quantum light generated using a chip made from silicon--one of the most widely used materials for modern electronics.

The UC San Diego researchers recently described their new device's performance online in the journal Nature Communications, available via Open Access .

The researchers say practical applications of quantum optics will seem more feasible if devices for generating and controlling these photons can be manufactured using conventional materials from the semiconductor industry such as silicon. These devices could have applications in secure communications, precise measurements of motion or shape, and sensing using ultra-low levels of light.

For instance, the researchers suggest that their silicon pair-generation chip could be used as part of a more complicated "quantum transceiver" module, which would eventually integrate a controllable photon source with a sensitive photon detector in a single package.

"Optical transceivers have revolutionized data communications, and tens of millions of these devices are used to send billions of bits of data all over the internet and inside data centers every second," said Shayan Mookherjea, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering. "But these transceivers contain lasers that are made using compound semiconductors, not silicon--which would be more manufacturable and cheaper.

The fact that silicon can be used to make a quantum photonic pair source, and that its spectral properties can be fine-tuned easily is exciting from a technological point of view."

"Silicon is known to be a poor light-emitting material--there is no silicon diode laser, for example, despite many decades of research," added Mookherjea. "However, if you want to make a chip that emits quantum light such as pairs of single photons which are entangled in some quantum mechanical properties and you want to do it at room temperature so that the chip can be widely used, then it turns out that silicon is actually quite a good material for generating photons."

Continued here:

Researchers generate tunable photon-pair spectrum using room-temperature quantum optics silicon chip

Landa Digital Printing will supply its first printers to its customers in 2015.

Landa Digital Printing, Benny Landa's nano-printing venture, plans to recruit dozens of employees in Israel, and to supply its first printers to its customers in 2015, sources inform "Globes." Six months ago, Landa Digital raised 100 million from German group Altana, which develops special chemical products, at a value estimated at over NIS 1 billion. Landa's company has developed a unique digital printing process with special ink composed of particles tens of nanometers in size (one nanometer is one billionth of a meter) that facilitates better printing quality and efficiency, aimed mainly at the commercial printing market.

The company displayed its product at professional exhibitions already in 2012, and obtained substantial orders. Altana's investment was designed to enable the company to expand its production infrastructure in preparation for marketing the machines to customers.

Not everything has gone smoothly for the company, however. In a post by Landa at the end of last week, he explained about the process, saying, "We had to re-engineer the product from top to bottom." In a talk with "Globes," he said, "We were under the radar for a long time, and were in contact with only a few close customers. When we sent our people to 120 customers to start working with them, we discovered that there were many things in the product they would prefer to be different.

"For example, they wanted package printers to be able to coat the package, while our plan was for them to do the coating separately The machine we displayed at the exhibition weighed 10 tons. Today, our star is a 30-ton machine - and that's not just metal; that's 30 tons of technology," Landa says. "The customers were amazing - they waited patiently, and there were almost no cancellations."

Landa says that the process took a lot of time and cost more money than expected. Landa and Altana have invested over $250 million in the process to date. "Today, we have enough resources for all our goals," Landa declares. The next stage is setting up a global marketing and sales network, and Landa Digital Printing recently recruited Marc Schillemans, who has served in senior executive positions in printing industry, as VP sales for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. Kobi Ulmer has been appointed VP field operations.

"In the next year, we'll hire sales and marketing personnel, and we're already hiring more engineering and production employees," Landa says. "Today, we have over 200 employees, and we'll hire dozens more."

"Globes": How is cooperation with Altana going?

Landa: "Wonderfully. It's an amazing partner, with a lot of synergy. We cooperate a lot, not just in things for now, but also in future applications."

Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - http://www.globes-online.com - on December 14, 2014

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Benny Landa to hire dozens for nano-printing venture

COLLEGE PARK, Md., Dec. 11, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Recent efforts between the University of Maryland (UMD) and Bethesda-based Weinberg Medical Physics LLC (WMP) have led to a new technique to magnetically deliver drug-carrying particles to hard-to-reach targets. The method has the potential to transform the way deep-tissue tumors and other diseases are treated.

UMD Fischell Department of Bioengineering (BioE) alumnus Dr. Aleksandar Nacev and BioE and Institute for Systems Research Professor Benjamin Shapiro have teamed up with WMP to exploit fast pulsed magnetic fields to focus nano-therapeutic magnetic particles to deep targets.

For years, researchers have worked with magnetic nano-particles loaded with therapies such as drugs or genes to develop noninvasive techniques to direct therapies and diagnostics to targets in the body. Magnetic nanoparticle research garnered media attention in October, when Google X (Google's innovation lab dedicated to furthering major technological advancements) announced its interest in the use of magnetic nano-particles for diagnostic applications.

Instead of surgery or systemically administered treatments, such as chemotherapy, the use of magnetic particles as drug carriers could potentially allow clinicians to use external electromagnets to focus therapy to the precise locations of a disease within a patient. However, until now, particles could only be attracted to a magnet, and thus could not be concentrated to points away from the magnet face. As a result, in prior clinical trials magnets held outside the body had only been able to concentrate treatment to targets at or just below the skin surface.

"What we have shown experimentally is that by exploiting the physics of nanorods we can use fast pulsed magnetic fields to focus the particles to a deep target between the magnets," Shapiro said.

These pulsed magnetic fields allowed the team to reverse the usual behavior of magnetic nano-particles. Instead of a magnet attracting the particles, they showed that an initial magnetic pulse can orient the rod-shaped particles without pulling them, and then a subsequent pulse can push the particles before the particles can reorient. By repeating the pulses in sequence, the particles were focused to locations deep between the electromagnets.

"The Holy Grail of magnetic drug targeting is the dream of using magnets outside the body to minimally-invasively direct drug therapy to anywhere inside the body, for example, to inoperable deep tumors or to sections of the brain that have been damaged by trauma, vascular or degenerative diseases," said Dr. Irving Weinberg, a practicing physician and the President of WMP. "We have shown that fast pulsing of external electromagnetic fields may be able to achieve this goal."

The study, published this week in Nano Letters under the title "Dynamic Inversion Enables External Magnets to Concentrate Ferromagnetic Rods to a Central Target," shows that, with appropriate external magnetic pulses, ferromagnetic particles carrying drugs or molecules could be concentrated to arbitrary deep locations between magnets. Nacev, Weinberg, Shapiro and their fellow researchers are now working to demonstrate this method in vivo to prove its therapeutic potential, in a project funded by the National Cancer Institute (NCI) Small Business Innovation Research program and featured at the NCI-sponsored Investor Conference in San Francisco. Additionally, the research team recently launched IronFocus Medical, Inc., a startup company established to commercialize their invention. More information about IronFocus Medical, Inc. is available online at http://www.ironfocusmedical.com.

"This technology could enable a new therapeutic modality that combines the spatial precision of traditional image-guided radiation with the biochemical specificity of molecular medicine," said Dr. John R. Adler, Vice President and Chief of New Clinical Applications for Varian Medical Systems.

Full text of the Nano Letters paper is available online at http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/nl503654t with a video showing the magnetic focusing at http://ter.ps/magnetic.

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Run Deep: Pulsing Magnetic Fields Focus Nano-Particles to Deep Targets

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Newswise If seeing is believing, C.K. Choi has a passion for clarityin a very tiny world. The assistant professor of mechanical engineering's research lies at the micro-scale, in channels no thicker than a strand of hair.

Chois first visualization breakthrough came more than 10 years ago when his team, for the first time in the world, used a confocal microscope to observe velocity fields in a micro-channel, in a space with a diameter smaller than a pin.

His next pioneering move was an innovative use of a technology Choi describes as beautiful, the Total Internal Reflection Fluorescence Microscope. He integrated this system with other optical devices to help researchers literally see in the dark, creating fluorescent images clear enough to examine nanoparticles and proteins near the surface.

Choi sought practical applications for his optical devices and found them in biomedical engineering. Researchers were using electrical measurements to analyze physiological changes of cells inside blood vessels, but needed an optical way to verify the data. He proposed using indium tin oxide (ITO), a common coating used in modern electronics. His hunch worked: the ITO biosensor offered the perfect marriage of optical transparency and electrical conductivity, allowing both electrical measurements and visual observation simultaneously.

The ITO biosensor led to other inter-disciplinary workand a lot more questions. In the human body, cells are subjected to different environments: lung cells to the flow of oxygen, heart cells to pulses of blood, brain cells to electrical charges, etc. Given these radically different environments, Choi asked himself, If I grow cells outside their normal living conditions, will they really be the same type of cells? If companies test their drugs on cells grown here [in the static environment of the lab], will their results be accurate?

He knew that he couldnt mimic all the bodys natural conditions, but he could at least create a device that allowed medical researchers to examine their cell lines under appropriate flow conditions.

Actually very low flow conditions, as is the case with lung cells. In his search for a device that could create ultra-low flows, Choi realized that neither direct current (DC) nor syringe pumps could be used: most mechanical pumps cannot produce consistent flow in micro-channels, and DC can physiologically affect the cells being studied. Exposure to DC can alter the metabolism and nutrients, especially problematic for stem cells which are highly sensitive to environmental changes.

Choi and his collaborators proposed using diodes, which are cheap, reliable components, to drive the current in their electro-osmosis diode pumping device (EOS). It worked. The EOS creates low, consistent flows in a way that does not affect cell growth and contains optical elements to visually track the fluorescent particles.

Continued here:

Seeing Is Believing

19 hours ago by Mike Giannone European Space Agency astronaut Frank De Winne, Expedition 20 flight engineer, performs another two runs of the InSPACE-2 study, activating the Microgravity Science Glovebox and powering on the hardware in the Columbus module of the International Space Station. Credit: NASA

They say good things come in small packages; sometimes so do exciting new discoveries.

From research into things that are one-billionth of a meter in size, near limitless engineering applications could result. Known as nano-particles, understanding these tiny items could result in new materials and manufacturing models, better energy producing systems, improved or new mechanical systems, enhanced films, fiber optics and other soft materials.

The Structure of Paramagnetic Aggregates from Colloidal Emulsions (InSPACE) series of experiments on the International Space Station explored nano-particles suspended in Magnetorheolocial (MR) fluidsa type of smart fluid that tends to self-assemble into shapes in the presence of a magnetic field. InSPACE research is supported by NASA's Space Life and Physical Sciences Division, which oversees space station research into basic and applied scientific studies in life and physical sciences.

Emerging from the InSPACE-2 investigation are findings that clarify details, confirm facts and sometimes surprise researchers.

The article titled 'Buckling Instability of Self-Assembled Colloidal Columns', published in the American Physical Society's Physical Review Letters on Sept. 26, 2014, is just the latest paper written by InSPACE researchers based on space station experiments. It explains the unexpected bucking phenomenon first observed in InSPACE-2.

When exposed to magnetic fields, MR fluids can transition into a nearly solid-like state. When the magnetic field is removed, the fluids disassemble and buckle. While the disassembling was expected, the buckling was something that surprised Eric Furst, Ph.D, principal investigator and a 20-plus-year veteran of colloidal research.

"We had never seen anything like this buckling in ground-based experiments," said Furst, of the University of Delaware, Newark.

Buckling is seenand properly designed to avoidin buildings and mechanical devices. However, this property had not been observed in MR fluids or more generally, in colloidal soft matter systems before now.

"There's a growing interest in buckling phenomena in terms of manipulating, in particular, soft materials," said Furst. "Whether we want to induce bucking or not, I'm not sure. That's the engineering question we have in front of us. What can we do with this really beautiful, physical, fundamental result?"

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Buckle up for more big news from InSPACE's nano-world

Summary:Brown University biomedical scientists have created an implant that appears to deter breast cancer cell regrowth. Made from a common polymer, the implant is the first to be modified at the nanoscale.

A "bed-of-nails" inside the surface of the implant prevents cancerous cells from growing. Credit: Webster Lab/Brown University

One in eight women in the United States will develop breast cancer, and most will have no choice but to face age-old chemotherapy drugs, surgery and breast reconstruction. As many as one-fifth of those women will suffer relapse.

To help drive down the rate of relapse, researchers at Brown University have created a breast implant with a "bed-of-nails" surface at the nanoscale that deters cancer cells from dwelling and thriving.

The implant, made from a common federally approved polymer, has a nanoscale surface that impedes cancerous cells from gathering the nutrients they need to thrive because of the lack of blood-vessel architecture that they depend on. The implant attracts healthy breast cell formation instead.

"We've created an [implant] surface with features that can at least decrease [cancerous] cell functions without having to use chemotherapeutics, radiation, or other processes to kill cancer cells," said Thomas Webster, associate professor of engineering. "It's a surface that's hospitable to healthy breast cells and less so for cancerous breast cells."

To create the implant, Webster and his team built a cast on a glass plate using 23-nanometer-diameter polystyrene beads and polylactic-co-glycolic acid (PLGA), a biodegradable polymer approved by the FDA and used widely in clinical settings, such as stitches. The result was an implant surface covered with adjoining, 23-nanometer-high pimples. For comparison, Webster and his lab partner also created surfaces with 300-nanometer and 400-nanometer peaks; they found that the 23-nanometer surface worked best at deterring breast cancer cells.

"I would guess that surface peaks less than 23 nanometers would be even better, Webster added, although polystyrene beads with such dimensions dont yet exist. "The more you can push up that cancerous cell, the more you keep it from interacting with the surface."

Next, the researchers will look closely at why the nano-modified surfaces deter malignant breast cells. They will manipulate the surface features to yield greater results, and experiment with alternative materials.

The test results are published in Nanotechnology.

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Breast implant with nano 'bed-of-nails' deters cancer cells

PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

8-Dec-2014

Contact: Kat J. McAlpine katherine.mcalpine@wyss.harvard.edu 617-432-8266 Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard @wyssinstitute

(BOSTON and CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts) - One of the reasons cancer is so deadly is that it can evade attack from the body's immune system, which allows tumors to flourish and spread. Scientists can try to induce the immune system, known as immunotherapy, to go into attack mode to fight cancer and to build long lasting immune resistance to cancer cells. Now, researchers at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering and Harvard's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) show a non-surgical injection of programmable biomaterial that spontaneously assembles in vivo into a 3D structure could fight and even help prevent cancer and also infectious disease such as HIV. Their findings are reported in Nature Biotechnology.

"We can create 3D structures using minimally invasive delivery to enrich and activate a host's immune cells to target and attack harmful cells in vivo," said the study's senior author David Mooney, Ph.D., who is a Wyss Institute Core Faculty Member and the Robert P. Pinkas Family Professor of Bioengineering at Harvard SEAS .

Tiny biodegradable rod-like structures made from silica, known as mesoporous silica rods (MSRs), can be loaded with biological and chemical drug components and then delivered by needle just underneath the skin. The rods spontaneously assemble at the vaccination site to form a three-dimensional scaffold, like pouring a box of matchsticks into a pile on a table. The porous spaces in the stack of MSRs are large enough to recruit and fill up with dendritic cells, which are "surveillance" cells that monitor the body and trigger an immune response when a harmful presence is detected.

"Nano-sized mesoporous silica particles have already been established as useful for manipulating individual cells from the inside, but this is the first time that larger particles, in the micron-sized range, are used to create a 3D in vivo scaffold that can recruit and attract tens of millions of immune cells," said co-lead author Jaeyun Kim, Ph.D., an Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering at Sungkyunkwan University and a former Wyss Institute Postdoctoral Fellow.

Synthesized in the lab, the MSRs are built with small holes, known as nanopores, inside. The nanopores can be filled with specific cytokines, oligonucleotides, large protein antigens, or any variety of drugs of interest to allow a vast number of possible combinations to treat a range of infections.

"Although right now we are focusing on developing a cancer vaccine, in the future we could be able to manipulate which type of dendritic cells or other types of immune cells are recruited to the 3D scaffold by using different kinds of cytokines released from the MSRs," said co-lead author Aileen Li, a graduate student pursuing her Ph.D. in bioengineering at Harvard SEAS. "By tuning the surface properties and pore size of the MSRs, and therefore controlling the introduction and release of various proteins and drugs, we can manipulate the immune system to treat multiple diseases."

Once the 3D scaffold has recruited dendritic cells from the body, the drugs contained in the MSRs are released, which trips their "surveillance" trigger and initiates an immune response. The activated dendritic cells leave the scaffold and travel to the lymph nodes, where they raise alarm and direct the body's immune system to attack specific cells, such as cancerous cells. At the site of the injection, the MSRs biodegrade and dissolve naturally within a few months.

Originally posted here:

Injectable 3-D vaccines could fight cancer and infectious diseases

UMS ready to collaborate in the emerging AI field

KOTA KINABALU: Universiti Malaysia Sabah (UMS) is ready to collaborate with any party on research and development (R&D) in the emerging Artificial Intelligence (AI) field.

Associate Professor Dr Ismail Saad, head of the university's AI Research Unit (AiRU), under its School of Engineering and Information Technology (SEIT) Faculty, said the unit has been working in different AI sub-fields since its establishment in 2006.

He said under this unit, they have six research groups each working on a particular sub-field.

The sub-fields are Biomimetic Computing (BiRG); Intelligence Signal Processing (ISP); Knowledge Discovery and Machine Learning (KDML); Nano Engineering and Materials (NEMs); Robotics and Intelligent Systems (myRIS); and Vision and Language (V&L). "AiRU is a cross-disciplinary unit working in different sub-fields of Artificial Intelligence and Engineering. We welcome any R&D collaboration on the emerging field of AI," he said in representing UMS Vice Chancellor Professor Datuk Dr Mohd Harun Abdullah and the university in welcoming local and international participants of the International Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Application in Engineering and Technology (ICAIET2014) at Le Meridien, here, Wednesday.

AiRU is the co-organiser of the three-day international conference, which is the fourth in a series of international conferences organised through its collaboration with the United Kingdom (UK) Simulation Society.

The first, second and third ICAIET were held in 2002, 2004 and 2006 and reportedly produced a very successful outcome and impact to students, researches, high learning institutions and government organisations in Malaysia and abroad.

This time around, there would be six keynote speeches and 37 research papers presented by experts from various universities and business institutions involved in the AI field.

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UMS ready to collaborate in the emerging AI field

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A doctoral student in materials science at Technische Universitat Darmstadt is making multifunctional nanotubes of goldwith the help of vitamin C and other harmless substances.

Coffee, apple juice, and vitamin C: things that people ingest every day are experimental material for chemist Eva-Maria Felix. The doctoral student in the research group of Professor Wolfgang Ensinger in the Department of Material Analysis is working on making nanotubes of gold. She precipitates the precious metal from an aqueous solution onto a pretreated film with many tiny channels. The metal on the walls of the channels adopts the shape of nanotubes; the film is then dissolved. The technique itself is not new, but Felix has modified it: "The chemicals that are usually used for this were just too toxic for me." She preferred not to use cyanide, formaldehyde, arsenic and heavy metal salts. She was inspired by a journal article by researchers who achieved silver precipitation using coffee.

Felix also used coffee in her first experiments. She then tested apple juice, followed by vitamin C. This seemed to be the best suited to her because "you never know what's in coffee and apple juice." On the other hand, Vitamin C - or ascorbic acid - is available in pure form from chemical stores - a requirement for reproducible studies. But what does the vitamin have to do with the precipitation of gold? In the human body, vitamin C makes free radicals harmless by transferring electrons to them. "Gold precipitation functions according to the same principle. The only difference is that the vitamin does not take on radicals, but rather gold ions", explains Falk Mnch, a postdoctoral researcher and supervisor of Felix' PhD thesis. The gold ions that are dissolved in the precipitation bath are transformed into metallic gold after absorbing electrons.

Additional, harmless chemicals are required for the process. But the procedure is green not only because of the non-toxic substances, but also because it takes place at room temperature and without an external power supply, thus saving energy. Furthermore, as opposed to other methods, no expensive devices are required. The film with the nanochannels is merely placed in the precipitation bath. "It's really unbelievable that aqueous solutions and simple basic chemicals can produce such precise nanostructures" says Mnch.

"Green meets Nano" is a motto of the researchers at the TU. The only thing that is not green in the procedure is the film that is used as the template, notes Ensinger. Although tests with bio-based plastics are already on the agenda, the films still consist of polycarbonate also made or of polyethylene terephthalate (PET).

In order to create the miniature plastic channels that define the shape, a round film is vertically bombarded with an ion beam. Each ion leaves a straight track in the film which then becomes a small hole, or, when seen through the microscope: a channel that is then etched. Its diameter can be set precisely - down to far less than 100 nanometers. The gold nanotubes are thus several hundred times finer than a human hair. Their wall thickness depends both on the duration of precipitation and on the gold concentration of the original solution. After the film is dissolved, the result is - depending on the experimental conditions - a collection of individual nanotubes or an array of hundreds of thousands of interconnected tubes.

The crux of the technique: an ion accelerator is needed to generate an ion beam. The TU scientists found the ideal partner for their research in the GSI Helmholtz Center for Heavy Ion Research at the outskirts of Darmstadt; but the GSI's large-scale accelerator was not suitable for subsequent commercial use for financial reasons. The TU scientists are already looking for alternatives. For example, a company in the USA produces similarly perforated films with smaller accelerators. "The films are not as well-defined as ours are, but they are also suitable", says Mnch. Furthermore, they are inexpensive: a film roughly the size of a sheet of paper costs only a few euros. Ensinger says that the price of gold is not a factor because the amounts that are required are small: "With 1 gram of gold, we could make a nanotube for literally every person on earth." Although a single tube is not useful for anyone, not much material is needed for microsensors, miniature through-flow reactors, or other potential applications.

Ensinger's team has already successfully tested one use of the gold nanotubes: they are suitable for building sensors to measure hydrogen peroxide. This chemical damages nerve cells and apparently plays a role in neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. A microsensor that can measure hydrogen peroxide in the human body would thus be practical both in medical research as well as for diagnosis. The conversion of hydrogen peroxide to water, catalyzed by the gold releases electrons generates an easily measurable electric current. The gold nanotubes conduct electricity especially well due to their one-dimensional structure. In addition, they are relatively long and are thus more durable than normal nanoparticles.

"Nano meets Life" is the second motto of the TU Materials Science researchers. For example, they are thinking about also using the nanotubes to measure blood sugar. "A subcutaneous sensor could save diabetes patients from having to constantly prick their fingers" thinks Ensinger. The green method of production also has advantages here because the components of such implants should be produced with as few toxic chemicals as possible. "This completes the circle", says the TU professor, combining the two mottos: "Green meets Nano meets Life".

See more here:

Green meets nano: Scientists create multifunctional nanotubes using nontoxic materials

Texas Tech is leading the way in nanoscale research engineering. Researchers titled the McKenna Group have recently developed a method for indicating the surface properties of certain materials at temperatures on the smallest of scales, nanoscale.

Leading the team of researchers was Greg McKenna, a professor of chemical engineering and the John R. Bradford Endowed Chair in Engineering.

Knowing the properties of materials at particular temperatures is important to engineers and in engineering, he said.

If an engineer does not take the properties at different temperatures into account it can lead to major disasters in the work field. An example often used for this is the 1986 Challenger space shuttle disaster, in which case the rubber O-ring failed, leading to the death of seven astronauts.

As technology advances machines get smaller and knowing characteristics of the technologies can make a huge engineering difference, he said.

The problem is known properties of a material can drastically change at the nanoscale, McKenna said.

The nanoscale, he said, is about 1/1,000 of the diameter of a humans hair follicle.

The nanoscale is a funny range of sizes where materials have properties that are not what we expect, even at a step up at the microscale, he said. We are developing methods to characterize surface properties and relate them to nanoscale behavior using a nanoindenter and other nano-mechanical measurement methods.

McKenna and his group have looked at many polymers and explosive materials to see exactly how surface properties varied on the nanoscale, he said, and how the surface impacts the properties on the scale.

Nanoindentation allows researchers such as McKenna to investigate how materials spring back when pushed and how the materials flows, McKenna said.

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University leads others in nanoscale engineering research

'Once switched, PCMs require no power to maintain their switched state'

Optical-switching technology built on nano-antenna reflectarrays and tunable materials could transform high-speed optical networks, new research has shown.

Dr Maciej Klemm and Professor Martin Cryan from the University of Bristols Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering propose using the concept of tunable optical antennas and antenna arrays for dynamic beam shaping and steering utilised in free-space optical inter/intra chip interconnects.

Tunability of optical antennas is achieved by using phase change materials (PCMs), which exhibit different optical properties in the amorphous and crystalline states.

By engineering optical antennas or antenna arrays, it is possible to design dynamic wireless optical links. In order to demonstrate this concept, the researchers modelled a PCM-based tunable reflectarray configured to form a dynamic optical link between a source and two receivers.

>See also:IBM grants UK universities unprecedented access to AI system Watson

The study found the designed reflectarray is able to switch the optical link between multiple optical receivers by changing the refractive index of the PCM. Two types of antennas were used in the tunable reflectarray to achieve full control of the wavefront of the reflected beam.

PCMs, together with nanoantennas, have the potential to provide fast, dynamic optical switching with very low power consumption levels, said Dr Klemm. Once switched, PCMs require no power to maintain their switched state.

This could be a breakthrough technology for applications such as data centres where power consumption is of critical importance.

Continued here:

UK researchers discover breakthrough technology for enterprise networks

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Newswise Engineering researchers at Texas Tech University have developed a method for characterizing the surface properties of materials at different temperatures at the nanoscale.

Knowing properties of materials at different temperatures is important in engineering, said Gregory McKenna, a professor of chemical engineering and the John R. Bradford Endowed Chair in Engineering. For example, the rubber O-ring that failed during the 1986 space shuttle disaster serves at a tragic case study of what can go wrong when decision-makers dont take this into account.

The problem, he said, is known properties of a material can radically change at the nanoscale a tiny scale about 1/1000 of the diameter of a human hair at which scientists have begun building machines that do work. McKenna and graduate student Meiyu Zhai looked at several polymers and explosive materials to see how surface properties varied at the nanoscale and how the surface impacts the nanoscale properties.

Their first results on the multi-curve method appeared in the peer-reviewed journal, Journal of Polymer Science Part B: Polymer Physics and was highlighted in Advances in Engineering.

The nanoscale is a funny range of sizes where materials have properties that are not what we expect, even at a step up at the microscale, he said. We are developing methods to characterize surface properties and relate them to nanoscale behavior using a nanoindenter and other nano-mechanical measurement methods.

In nanoindentation, researchers can investigate both the elastic properties (how materials spring back when pushed) or the viscous properties (how the material flows). The group has found several surprising results: For example, in other work, the team found extremely thin polycarbonate films become liquid-like at the nanoscale, while they are glassy at the macroscopic size scale. Nanoindentation can be used to relate surface properties to this observation.

As machines get smaller and smaller, McKenna said, knowing this information can be invaluable to future engineers.

The nanoindentation project was funded by The Office of Naval Research. The researchers also are funded by the National Science Foundation and the American Chemical Society-Petroleum Research Fund.

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Texas Tech Engineers Discover New Method to Determine Surface Properties at the Nanoscale