Nanorobots search for organ-inlets demanding protein injection.

From eliminating the side effects of chemotherapy to treating Alzheimer’s disease, the potential medical applications of nanorobots are vast and ambitious.
In the past decade, researchers have made many improvements on the different systems required for developing practical nanorobots, such as sensors, energy supply, and data transmission, ISNA reported.
But there is still a great deal of work to do before tiny “molecular machines“ can begin traveling through the arteries for diagnosing or treating ailments.
To try to pick up the pace, a group of researchers has recently developed an innovative approach to help in the research and development of nanorobots--virtual reality.
Bijan Shirinzadeh, Adriano Cavalcanti, Robert Freitas, Jr., and Tad Hogg, representing institutions in Melbourne, Australia, and the US, have published their simulation procedure in a recent issue of Nanotechnology.
Just as 3D simulations previously helped engineers greatly accelerate developmental research in the semiconductor industry, Cavalcanti and colleagues hope that virtual nanorobots, virtual biomolecules and virtual arteries will accelerate the progress of nanorobot development.
“The software NCD (nanorobot control design) is a system implemented to serve as a test bed for nanorobot 3D prototyping,“ Cavalcanti, CEO of the Center for Automation in Nanobiotech and researcher at Monash University in Melbourne.
“It is an advanced nanomechatronics simulator that provides physical and numerical information for nanorobot task-based modeling. Serving as a fast development platform for medical nanorobots investigation, the NCD simulations show how to interact and control a nanorobot inside the body.“
In a demonstration of the real-time simulation, the nanorobots had the task of searching for proteins in a dynamic virtual environment, and identifying and bringing those proteins to a specific “organ-inlet“ for drug delivery.
The researchers analyzed how the nanorobots used different strategies to achieve this goal. For instance, the nanorobots could employ different sensory capabilities such as chemical and temperature sensors, as well as random movement.

There could be enough computing ability in just one brain cell to allow humans and animals to feel, a study suggests.
The brain has 100 billion neurons but scientists had thought they needed to join forces in larger networks to produce thoughts and sensations, BBC reported.
The Dutch and German study, published in Nature, found that stimulating just one rat neuron could deliver the sensation of touch.
One UK expert said this was the first time this had been measured in mammals.
The complexity of the human brain and how it stores countless thoughts, sensations and memories are still not fully understood.
Researchers believe connections between individual neurons, forming networks of at least a thousand, are the key to some of its processing power.
However, in some creatures with simpler nervous systems, such as flies, a single neuron can play a more significant role. The latest research suggests this may also be true in higher animals.
The team, from the Humboldt University in Germany and the Erasmus Medical Center in the Netherlands, stimulated single neurons in rats and found this was enough to trigger a behavioral response when their whiskers were touched.
A second research project from the US suggests the computational ability of the brain cell could be even more complex, with different synapses--the many junctions between neurons and other nerve cells--able to act independently from those found elsewhere on the same cell.
This could mean that, within a single neuron, different synapses could be storing or processing completely different bits of information.
Dr Douglas Armstrong, the deputy director of the Edinburgh Center for Bioinformatics, said the research did not mean all neurons had an individual role to play but that, in some instances, they might be capable of working alone with measurable results.
He said: “The generally accepted model was that networks or arrays make decisions and that the influence of a single neuron is smaller - but this work and other recent studies support a more important role for the individual neuron.
“These studies drive down the level at which relevant computation is happening in the brain.“

Serpentine forms deep in the ocean, up to 200 kilometers below the surface, home to some of the world's deadliest earthquakes.

A dark green, unusually soft layer of rock known as serpentine, which coats tectonic plates, plays a key role in the emergence of powerful earthquakes, a US-French study said.
According to AFP, serpentine forms deep in the ocean, up to 200 kilometers below the surface, home to some of the world’s deadliest earthquakes such as the massive 9.0-magnitude quake that triggered the devastating tsunami off Indonesia in December 2004.
The soft rock, which can form under or over the ocean’s crust, is also present in other areas of high volcanic and seismic activity in the Caribbean and Japan, according to the study published in the December 21 edition of the journal Science.
The rocks on the ocean bottom are usually rigid, but they can behave like fluids under extremely high temperatures and pressures, the study said.
But these rocks can break during tectonic plate movements in frigid waters, causing an earthquake, according to the study conducted by scientists from the CNRS lab at Lyon University along with other French and American researchers.

Having a history of allergies or hay fever may offer protection from deadly pancreatic cancer, according to a study appearing in the International Journal of Cancer.
Ayelet Eppel, of Mt. Sinai Hospital, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and colleagues examined the association between a history of allergies or asthma and the risk of pancreas cancer in a population-based, case-control study in Ontario, Reuters said.
They identified cases of pancreatic cancer through the Ontario Cancer Registry and recruited control subjects from the Ontario Familial Colorectal Cancer Registry.
A total of 276 pancreatic cancer cases and 378 controls were included in the study.
The investigators found that a history of allergies or hay fever was associated with a significant 57 percent reduction in the risk of pancreatic cancer.
The reduction in risk was stronger in men than in women. There was no association between history of asthma and the risk of cancer of the pancreas.
“Further research is needed to replicate these findings,“ Eppel told Reuters Health.
“If replicated, our findings may be of importance to understanding the biological mechanisms involved in pancreas cancer development--for example, the role of the immune system,“ the researcher explained, adding: “The association between allergies and certain cancers has been found in other studies.“

Acupuncture can boost energy levels and radically improve a patientÕs quality of life.

Acupuncture could help relieve the crippling fatigue associated with chemotherapy treatment in cancer patients. That is the conclusion of scientists at the University of Manchester, UK, who say their preliminary results are so promising that further research needs to be carried out to study the effect in more detail.
Crippling and long-lasting fatigue is one the most common side-effects of chemotherapy, NewScientist.com said.
The new work indicates that acupuncture can boost energy levels and radically improve a patient’s quality of life.
Numerous trials have shown that acupuncture appears to work for a variety of conditions.
Last year, two studies demonstrated that acupuncture may help boost fertility after IVF, although a third study failed to demonstrate an effect.
The US National Institute of Health says that acupuncture is an effective treatment for nausea caused by anaesthesia and cancer chemotherapy, as well as dental pain following surgery.
In the latest study, 47 patients suffering from moderate to severe fatigue were enrolled in a randomized placebo-controlled trial at Manchester’s Christie Hospital.
The patients were randomly assigned to one of three groups to receive either acupuncture or acupressure--placing physical pressure on acupuncture points with hands or objects--or sham acupressure.
“People felt better and had more energy after the acupuncture,“ says Alexander Molassiotis, professor of cancer and supportive care at the University of Manchester who led the work.
“Patients had the energy to walk to the shops and to socialize, so their quality of life improved significantly,“ he says.
The acupuncture group received six 20-minute sessions spread over three weeks. During these sessions the characteristic thin needles were inserted about 2 centimeters into the patients’ body at three points. The points were selected for their supposed propensity to boost energy levels and reduce fatigue.
Patients in the acupressure group were taught to massage the same acupuncture points for one minute a day for two weeks. The sham acupressure group was taught the same technique, but told to massage different points on the body not associated with energy and fatigue.
Patients in the acupuncture group reported a 36 percent improvement in fatigue levels, whilst those in the acupressure group improved by 19 percent. Those in the sham acupressure group reported a 0.6 percent improvement.
Molassiotis says that the improvements were not down to the placebo effect.
“Our trial was able to take this into account,“ he says. But he says a bigger trial is needed to properly characterize the effect and is planning one in the near future.

How do many plants ship sugars from their leaves to flowers, roots, fruits and other parts of their structure? Using genetic engineering techniques, Cornell researchers have finally proven a long-standing theory of how this occurs.
The findings not only deepen understanding of basic plant biology but could one day allow researchers to genetically engineer plants with increased photosynthetic rates, yields and carbon dioxide intake, ScienceDaily said.
This might be critically important in an era of climate change.
The theory of transporting sugar, the polymer trap model, was first proposed in 1991 by Robert Turgeon, Cornell professor of plant biology.
He is also the senior author of the latest research published in the Dec. 4 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Ashlee McCaskill, who worked in Turgeon’s lab, is the paper’s lead author.
Turgeon’s theory suggested that as sucrose, a form of sugar, accumulates in leaves as a product of photosynthesis, it diffuses into the plant’s tubelike transport tissue, called phloem, along with other nutrients to move to other areas of the plant.
Once in the phloem, small molecules of sucrose polymerize, or combine, to form larger, more complex sugars, which become too large to flow back into the leaf.
The polymerized sugars are then forced to move away from the leaf to parts of the plant where they may be used or stored.
To prove the theory, Turgeon and McCaskill genetically engineered a plant closely related to a member of the figwort family, purple mullein (Verbascum phoeneceum L.), so that two genes involved with polymerizing sucrose into larger molecules were silenced. When they did so, sugars backed up in the leaves.
In normal plants, when sugars (made from water and carbon dioxide during photosynthesis) accumulate in the leaves, photosynthesis slows down, and the plant does not take in as much carbon dioxide from the air. Likewise, when the sugars move out of the leaves, the rate of photosynthesis and carbon intake increases, McCaskill said.
“If we could increase the plant’s phloem-loading rate, the potential would be to increase photosynthetic rate and yield, but that is theoretical right now,“ said McCaskill.
A 2006 article in the journal Science, McCaskill said, showed that when atmospheric carbon dioxide increases, plants do not take in the excess due to a series of feedback loops that constrain the plant.
“Phloem loading is one of these feedbacks that have an effect on the ability of plants to intake carbon dioxide at the highest level,“ said McCaskill.
Carbon dioxide, which is increasing in the Earth’s atmosphere, is the major greenhouse gas that traps heat and warms the planet, McCaskill noted.

Mars could be in for an asteroid hit. A newly discovered hunk of space rock has a 1 in 75 chance of slamming into the Red Planet on Jan. 30, scientists said.
“These odds are extremely unusual. We frequently work with really long odds when we track ... threatening asteroids,“ said Steve Chesley, an astronomer with the Near Earth Object Program at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, AP reported.
The asteroid, known as 2007 WD5, was discovered in late November and is similar in size to an object that hit remote central Siberia in 1908, unleashing energy equivalent to a 15-megaton nuclear bomb and wiping out 60 million trees.
Scientists tracking the asteroid, currently halfway between Earth and Mars, initially put the odds of impact at 1 in 350 but increased the chances this week. Scientists expect the odds to diminish again early next month after getting new observations of the asteroid’s orbit, Chesley said.
“We know that it’s going to fly by Mars and most likely going to miss, but there’s a possibility of an impact,“ he said.
If the asteroid does smash into Mars, it will probably hit near the equator close to where the Rover Opportunity has been exploring the Martian plains since 2004.
The robot is not in danger because it lies outside the impact zone. Speeding at 8 miles a second, a collision would carve a hole the size of the famed Meteor Crater in Arizona.
In 1994, fragments of the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 smacked into Jupiter, creating a series of overlapping fireballs in space. Astronomers have yet to witness an asteroid impact with another planet.
“Unlike an Earth impact, we’re not afraid, but we’re excited,“ Chesley said.

Employees who have more control over their daily activities and do challenging work they enjoy are likely to be in better health, according to a new study from the University of Texas at Austin published in this month’s Journal of Health and Social Behavior.
“The most important finding is that creative activity helps people stay healthy,“ said lead author John Mirowsky, a sociology professor with the Population Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin, ScienceDaily reported.
“Creative activity is non-routine, enjoyable and provides opportunity for learning and for solving problems. People who do that kind of work, whether paid or not, feel healthier and have fewer physical problems.“
Although people who work do give up some control over their daily activities, the study found that being employed leads to better health generally, regardless of the amount of creativity required in their work.
“One thing that surprised us was that the daily activities of employed persons are more creative than those of non-employed persons of the same sex, age and level of education,“ Mirowsky said.
The study was composed of 2,592 adults who responded to a 1995 national telephone survey that was followed up in 1998.
The survey addressed general health and physical functioning, as well as how people spent their daily time on and whether their work, even if unpaid, gave them a chance to learn new things or do things they enjoy.
“The health advantage of being somewhat above average in creative work (in the 60th percentile) versus being somewhat below average (in the 40th percentile) is equal to being 6.7 years younger,“ Mirowsky said.
It is also equal to having two more years of education or 15 times greater household income, he added.
Although the authors didn’t examine specific job positions that may confer this health advantage, professions considered not to involve a creative environment included those in which people work in assembly lines.
Jobs that are high-status, with managerial authority, or that require complex work with data, generally provide more access to creative work, Mirowsky said.
“People with a wide variety of jobs manage to find ways to make them creative,“ Mirowsky said. “And, people with higher levels of education tend to have more creative activities in their lives, paid or not.“