Open Mind & Open Heart

U.S. researchers have developed a novel lung cancer treatment that uses nanoparticles to deliver an inhaled form of chemotherapy.

The scientists from Oregon State University, Rutgers University in New Jersey and the Cancer Institute of New Jersey developed "nanostructured lipid nanocarriers" that find cancer cells in the lung, attach to them and deliver drugs locally. With the inhaled substance, the patient receives an unadulterated form of the cancer drug compared with conventional intravenous administration, which can accumulate in other organs such as the liver or kidneys with toxic effects.

What's more, the nanoparticle comes with a bundle of small interfering RNA, siRNA, which helps silence certain genes to make the cancer cells more vulnerable to the drugs. Overall, the study showed 83% of the drug reaching its target in the lungs as opposed to 23% with the traditional approach, according to the article published in the Journal of Controlled Release.

"A drug delivery system that can be inhaled is a much more efficient approach, targeting just the cancer cells as much as possible," said co-author Oleh Taratula. "Other chemotherapeutic approaches only tend to suppress tumors, but this system appears to eliminate it."

The team has applied for a patent for the delivery platform, but human clinical trials will have to await further testing.

intro: This week had more than its share of important events including the first American space walk, the deaths of two major political figures, and women being granted the right to vote.

Nearly $1 trillion in debt, millions in unpaid loans—the numbers behind how Americans are struggling to pay for college.

Should we ban or label? These countries have banned or restricted GM crops.

The Guardian 10 great vegetarian recipes The Guardian And if you feel inspired to embrace vegetarianism, at least once or twice a week, we're here to help with a selection of recipes from good old British scotch egg alternatives, to spicy...

A handful of Democratic state lawmakers in Colorado face recall petition efforts in what looks to be the first wave of fallout over legislative votes to limit gun rights.  (Lawmakers facing recall bids over strict gun laws in Colorado | Fox News

Gun control supporters facing recall bids in Colo.
MiamiHerald.com
The National Rifle Association sent a political mailer saying it was coordinating the recall effort with local groups, though the local recall petitioners have denied that.

Scientists Richard Gordon and Alexei Sharov have suggested that if the rate of increase in the complexity of biological systems in the course of evolutionary history followed Moore's Law then life existed before the Earth was formed.

A microbiologist has found that the price we pay for preservative-free deliciousness comes in the shape of five nasty-looking funghi

by JOHN NOLTE 10 Jun 2013, 5:53 AM PDT

In a brutal Monday column, Liz Sidoti, the national politics editor for The Associated Press, takes a look at the Obama Administration's mounting scandals, the president's promises, and the...

A dream of scientists has been to visualize details of structures within our cells in real time, a breakthrough that would greatly aid in the study of their function.  However, even the best of current microscopes can take minutes to recreate images of the internal machinery of cells at a usable resolution.

Thanks to a technical tour de force, Yale University researchers can now generate accurate images of sub-cellular structures in milliseconds rather than minutes.

This image of microtubules, which act as a cellular scaffolding, was captured in just 33 milliseconds. “We can now see research come to life and tackle complex questions or conditions which require hundreds of images, something we have not been able to do before,” said Joerg Bewersdorf, assistant professor of cell biology and biomedical engineering and senior author of the research, published in the journal Nature Methods.

Scientists from the University of Manchester have discovered a material which combines graphene, a one-atom thick layer of graphite, with the transition metal dichalcogenides.

Something straight out of a science fiction film is fastly becoming an exciting reality as scientists from the University of Manchester have discovered a material which combines graphene, a one-atom thick layer of graphite, with the transition metal dichalcogenides. The material is thin and flexible, and it can absorb sunlight to produce electricity at the same rates of existing solar panels. This could be potentially used to coat the outside of buildings to generate power required to run appliances inside.

The material is composed of transition metal dichalcogenides layers sandwiched between the two outer layers of graphene. The graphene acts as an extremely efficient conductive layer, and the TMDC acts as a very sensitive light absorber.

Researchers have found that the 'light absorption characteristic' of the material can be increased when the graphene layer is sprinkled with gold particles. The material has a quantum efficiency of 30%.

Researchers believe that entire buildings could be powered by coating their exposed surfaces with the panels. Further, the energy produced by the panels could be used to alter the transparency and reflectivity of windows and fixtures.

This type of graphene material could be used to form on the outside of the buildings to generate power required to run the appliances inside. It is flexible and easy to use.

Not only can graphene paint be used to power objects, the material will also be able to chaneg color.

Researchers also believe that the graphene base substance has the ability to create a new generation of hand-held devices such as smartphones that can be powered using sunlight. These devices can be made ultra-thin, transparent and flexible.

Research suggests that there can be a high level of optimism regarding the development of graphene in the near future.

They hope that the material can be used for a wide range of industrial and day-to-day applications, providing potential technological breakthroughs in the areas, right from electronics to telecommunications and energy generation.

Power has devolved to the people. And the people hate it. In his book “Disconnect: The Breakdown of Representation in American Politics,” Stanford University political scientist Morris Fiorina considers this… (“@washmonthly: How U.S.

Standard scanners might be a little boring, collecting dust next to your printer rarely getting use now that everyone with a phone has a decent digital camera, and most workplaces allow a PDF signature rather than a handwritten one. Instead of allowing that scanner to sit around hogging a valuable power brick outlet, a team of Japanese engineers have turned it into a gigapixel holographic camera.

The reason why you don’t see holograms everywhere is not because we don’t know how to make them, but because the technology required to do so is currently quite expensive. A standard megapixel-based digital camera simply doesn’t have a high enough resolution to construct a hologram, so the photos have to run through an arduous post-production process that creates the hologram. However, cameras able to reach a gigapixel — which are expensive — are capable of creating the hologram with comparative ease. So, rather than figure out how to significantly decrease the cost of digital cameras capable of gigapixel resolution — or bite the bullet and pony up the cash for one — an engineering team from Japan’s Chiba University grabbed a standard digital scanner and combined it with a laser to create a holographic gigapixel camera.

The scanner used by the team — a regular 4800 dpi A4 paper scanner you could buy on the cheap from any office supply store — is capable of creating images with a resolution of over two gigapixels.

To generate a hologram from an object, a recording device and laser must be aligned with that object. The laser aims at the object, and the light (diffracted and not) is recorded by the scanner. That’s what the gigapixel resolution is for, as lower-res recording devices have trouble capturing the result. A standard scanner works similarly to this method, shining a light down the length of an object, with a line of CCDs scanning down the document and capturing the reflected light, but without the laser.

So far, the team used the rig to create 0.43-gigapixel holograms of tiny insects — a flea and an ant. Using a process the team called “band-limited double-step Fresnel refraction,” they were able to build the hologram in only 177 seconds, down from an original 350.

Though the team has managed to create gigapixel holograms using cheap equipment, the end result can’t be displayed on a standard monitor, because a 1920×1080 resolution isn’t high enough for the image. So, the team removed the need for expensive capture equipment, but still hasn’t broken through the expensive display barrier. At the moment, the team doesn’t seem to have a solution for this problem, but at least they’ve already solved the issue of creating a hologram with cheap equipment.

Main Point: Researchers have found that blood of youngsters can rejuvenate the heart of the old ones - at least in mice. Published in: Cell Study Further: Previously, researchers found that the blo...

The cannibalism strategy happens as part of a paternity struggle -- within the mother's womb.

Researchers revisit measurements to determine the temperature of the Earth's core, finding it to be 6,000C - as hot as the surface of the Sun.