Researchers for the first time have induced robust regeneration of nerve connections that control voluntary movement after spinal cord injury, showing the potential for new therapeutic approaches to paralysis and other motor function impairments.
ScienceDaily (Dec. 3, 2010) - IBM scientists have unveiled a new chip technology that integrates electrical and optical devices on the same piece of silicon, enabling computer chips to communicate using pulses of light (instead of electrical signals), resulting in smaller, faster and more power-efficient chips than is possible with conventional technologies.
ScienceDaily (May 22, 2010) - A major step toward being able to regulate nerve cells externally with the help of electronics has been taken by researchers at Linköping University and the Karolinska Institute in Sweden. The breakthrough is based on an ion transistor of plastic that can transport ions and charged biomolecules and thereby address and regulate cells.
ScienceDaily (Feb. 18, 2011) - A team of biologists, clinical oncologists, pathologists and information scientists has established a strategy for identifying biomarkers. If a particular pattern of these biomarkers can be detected in the blood, this indicates a cancerous disease. An interdisciplinary research breakthrough that opens many doors.
"And what if science becomes - or has become - lower-yield? Is that a reason to reconsider funding policies? Rationally, looking at the cost-benefit may already have effects on resource and funding allocations.
Is it unreasonable to assume that science will continue to produce large, demonstrable advances and insights of the size and importance of the major breakthroughs?"
A 36-year-old man has received the world's first synthetic trachea, made from a synthetic scaffold seeded with his own stem cells, in an operation at the Karolinska University Hospital in Stockholm, Sweden.
Professor Paolo Macchiarini of Karolinska University Hospital and Karolinska Institutet led an international team, including professor Alexander Seifalian from University College London, who designed and built the nanocomposite tracheal scaffold, and Harvard Bioscience, which produced a specifically designed bioreactor used to seed the scaffold with the patient´s own stem cells.
The cells were grown on the scaffold inside the bioreactor for two days before transplantation to the patient. Because the cells used to regenerate the trachea were the patient's own, there has been no rejection of the transplant and the patient is not taking immunosuppressive drugs.
"The big conceptual breakthrough is that we can move from transplanting organs to manufacturing them for patients," says David Green, the president of Harvard Bioscience in Holliston, Massachusetts.
Transplantations of tissue-engineered windpipes with synthetic scaffolds in combination with the patient's own stem cells as a standard procedure means that patients will not have to wait for a suitable donor organ. Patients could benefit from earlier surgery and have a greater chance of cure. This would be of especially great value for children, since the availability of donor tracheas is much lower than for adult patients.
ScienceDaily (July 11, 2011) - Researchers at Columbia Engineering School have built optical nanostructures that enable them to engineer the index of refraction and fully control light dispersion.
What would happen if we could generate power from our windowpanes? In this moving talk, entrepreneur Justin Hall-Tipping shows the materials that could make that possible, and how questioning our notion of 'normal' can lead to extraordinary breakthroughs.