Artificial Skin Made From Spider Silk

Spider-Man has had a rough summer. Recent news of his impending death and an overwrought, injury-prone musical have left the web-slinging community with a few black eyes. Yet like any great origin story, resurrection often rises out of the ashes. Case in point: recent news of spiders coming to the rescue of burn victims, reports Discovery.

Hanna Wendt, a tissue engineer in the Department of Plastic, Hand and Reconstructive Surgery at Medical School Hannover in Germany, along with her colleagues, recently published a study that suggests spider silk may hold the key to creating artificial skin for burn victims and other patients requiring skin grafts.

Wendt says previous materials, like collagen, used to create artificial skin did not seem strong enough, so she and her team turned to a material 5 times stronger than Kevlar: spider dragline silk.

"Spider silks display excellent mechanical features that even rival man-made, high-tech fibers," the study explains.

The researchers essentially milked the silk glands of golden orb web spiders, spooling the silk fibers as they came out. Next, the dragline silk was woven onto a rectangular steel frame, 0.7 mm thick, resulting in an easy-to-handle meshwork frame that could be sterilized.

Wendt and her colleagues found that human skins cell types could flourish on these meshwork frames if they were properly nurtured with nutrients, warmth and air.

"After two weeks of cultivating single single fibroblasts, keratinocytes were added to generate a bilayered skin model, consisting of dermis and epidermis equivalents," the study states.

New way to store sun's heat

A novel application of carbon nanotubes, developed by MIT researchers, shows promise as an innovative approach to storing solar energy for use whenever it's needed, reports Solardaily.

Storing the sun's heat in chemical form - rather than converting it to electricity or storing the heat itself in a heavily insulated container - has significant advantages, since in principle the chemical material can be stored for long periods of time without losing any of its stored energy.

While the new work shows the energy-storage capability of a specific type of molecule - azobenzene-functionalized carbon nanotubes - Grossman says the way the material was designed involves "a general concept that can be applied to many new materials."

Many of these have already been synthesized by other researchers for different applications, and would simply need to have their properties fine-tuned for solar thermal storage.

The key to controlling solar thermal storage is an energy barrier separating the two stable states the molecule can adopt; the detailed understanding of that barrier was central to Grossman's earlier research on fulvalene dirunthenium, accounting for its long-term stability.

Too low a barrier, and the molecule would return too easily to its "uncharged" state, failing to store energy for long periods; if the barrier were too high, it would not be able to easily release its energy when needed. "The barrier has to be optimized," Grossman says.

Already, the team is "very actively looking at a range of new materials," he says. While they have already identified the one very promising material described in this paper, he says, "I see this as the tip of the iceberg. We're pretty jazzed up about it."

Yosuke Kanai, assistant professor of chemistry at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, says "the idea of reversibly storing solar energy in chemical bonds is gaining a lot of attention these days.

The novelty of this work is how these authors have shown that the energy density can be significantly increased by using carbon nanotubes as nanoscale templates. This innovative idea also opens up an interesting avenue for tailoring already-known photoactive molecules for solar thermal fuels and storage in general."

With an Artificial Memory Chip, Rats Can Remember and Forget At the Touch of a Button

A new brain implant tested on rats restored lost memories at the flick of a switch, heralding a possible treatment method for patients with Alzheimer’s disease, stroke or amnesia. Such a “neural prosthesis” could someday be used to facilitate the memory-forming process and help patients remember, reports Popsci.

The device can mimic the brain’s own neural signals, thereby serving as a surrogate for a piece of the brain associated with forming memories. If there is sufficient neural activity to trace, the device can restore memories after they have been lost. If it’s used with a normal, functioning hippocampus, the device can even enhance memory.

In the study, scientists at Wake Forest University and the University of Southern California trained rats to learn a task, pressing one lever after another to receive water. In a series of tests, the rats pressed one lever and were then distracted. They had to remember which one they’d already pressed and therefore which lever to press next, left or right, in order to receive their reward.

The team attached electrodes to the rats’ brains, connected to two areas in the hippocampus, called CA1 and CA3. Prior research has shown that the hippocampus converts short-term memory into long-term memory. The team recorded the signals between these regions as the rats performed their tasks, and then they drugged the rats so that the hippocampus regions could not communicate. The rats forgot which lever to press next, said Theodore Berger, a biomedical engineering professor at USC and lead author of the study, which is published in the Journal of Neural Engineering.

“The rats still showed that they knew ‘when you press left first, then press right next time, and vice-versa,’” Berger said. “And they still knew in general to press levers for water, but they could only remember whether they had pressed left or right for 5-10 seconds.”

“Flip the switch on, and the rats remember. Flip it off, and the rats forget,” Berger said.

Although this is a long way from being tested in humans, the research shows that if there’s enough information about the neural coding of memories, the signal patterns can be recorded and duplicated, and restored later through a neural implant. This could be difficult to do in patients with severely limited memory, as the New York Times points out — there needs to be a memory trace that can be recorded and amplified.

A Nanotube Patch to Help Heal the Heart

A conductive patch of carbon nanotubes can regenerate heart tissue growing in a dish, according to preliminary research from Brown University. The patch, made of tiny chains of carbon atoms that fold in on themselves, forming a tube, conducts electricity and mimics the rough surface of natural tissue. The more nanotubes the Brown researchers added to the patch, the more cells around it were able to regenerate, reports Technology Review.

During a heart attack, areas of the heart are deprived of oxygen, killing muscle and nerve cells used to keep the heart beating strongly and rhythmically. The tissue cannot regenerate on its own, which disrupts the heart's rhythm, weakens it, and sometimes leads to a repeat heart attack. Tissue engineers around the globe are searching for ways to regenerate or repair this damaged tissue using different types of scaffolds and stem cells.

Thomas Webster, an associate professor of engineering and orthopedics at Brown and senior author of the study, says his work is distinctive because he examined not just the muscle cells that beat, but also the nerve cells that help them contract and the endothelial cells that line the blood vessels leading to and from the heart. The fact that the patch helped regenerate all three types of cells, which function interdependently in the heart, suggests the newly grown tissue is similar to normal heart tissue.

Webster's nanotube patch is just one of many approaches underway to help repair the heart. Many involve injecting stem cells collected from the patient into the damaged heart or implanting patches of muscle derived from these stem cells. He says the nanotubes could be used on their own, or as scaffolds for stem cells.

Webster's team is now fine-tuning the nanomaterial to create a linear pattern to more closely mimic the pattern in natural tissue. Others have shown that creating this kind of structure can provide a natural scaffold that supports tissue strength and growth.

To avoid regulatory delays, Webster says, he may try his carbon nanotube patch first on pets. Right now, heart attacks are usually fatal for the family dog, Webster says, because most animals don't get diagnostic medical care or treatment, and have smaller hearts that have a harder time than human hearts compensating for damage. Treating pets "could be a way to get this technology out earlier," he says.

Is the Cellphone Killing the Honeybee?

Pity the poor honeybee. Since 2003, bee colonies around the globe have declining at an alarming rate. And since bees play a vital role in agricultural production, that's bad news for us humans. Scientists suspect many factors may be responsible, including pesticides, viruses, the varroa mite, genetically modified crops, and even exceptionally cold winters. Now we can add cellphones to the list of possible culprits, reports PC World.

A study by Swiss researcher Daniel Favre shows that mobile phone-generated electromagnetic fields may contribute to Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), a condition that causes worker bees to desert the hive. In most cases, the queen bee is left with eggs, immature bees, and a lot of honey. The colony survives for a short time, but soon dies out without its workers.

"Recent efforts have been made to study another potential cause responsible for bee losses: manmade electromagnetic fields," Favre writes. And while the results obtained to date have been "highly controversial," they suggest a connection between the growing use of cellphones and a declining bee population.

Earlier studies have shown that cordless telephones placed at the bottom of beehives altered the behavior of honeybees that returned to the hive after foraging. However, other reports have failed to find a connection between mobile phones and colony collapse.

The researcher recorded sounds produced by bees in five healthy hives in two Switzerland locations between February and June 2009. The study recorded the bees' sounds with active mobile phones in the hive. Two mobile handsets (900MHz GSM) were chosen at random.

The bees were also recorded during their normal activities, both with and without inactive mobile phones.With the active devices, the first handset was triggered to call the second phone in the hive. A connection was made after 5 to 10 seconds of ringing.

Sound analyst shows the bees weren't disturbed by inactive or standby mobile phones. However, active cellphones confused the bees, creating "worker piping," or a signal to leave the hive.

The findings suggest that "the behavior of the bees remained perturbed for up to 12 hours after the end of the prolonged mobile phone communication," Favre writes. "This observation means that honeybees are sensitive to pulsed electromagnetic fields generated by the mobile telephones."

Oracle Starts Work on MySQL 5.6

With work under way to build the next version of the MySQL relational database software, Oracle is focusing much of its efforts on improving the software's performance and replication capabilities, according to an Oracle executive overseeing the software's development, reports PC World.

The company's developers are making notable improvements to the core InnoDB storage engine, which should make the database system more responsive. Also, the ability to replicate a database to another location, always useful for backup and disaster recovery, is being enhanced in a number of ways, said Tomas Ulin, Oracle's MySQL vice president of engineering.

Such work is being applauded in the MySQL community.

Oracle released the last version of MySQL, version 5.5, in December. The company has not set a release date for the next version, but last month Oracle released the first preview, or development milestone, version 5.6.

Much of the work now under way is going into making the database faster, Ulin said. The InnoDB storage engine and the optimizer have both been revamped for faster performance. The optimizer, for instance, can save its algorithms for a particular query, should the administrator be pleased with the performance of that query under the optimizer.

The company is undertaking quite a bit of work on MySQL's replication capabilities, which automatically copy databases to secondary locations.

With this release, replication is being sped up though multithreaded support. Multithreaded replication is "an absolutely killer feature," Schwartz said. When data is replicated on a backup server, the software can now spawn multiple threads on the backup server to copy the material in parallel.

Ulin said the company plans to release some more milestone beta releases before the final launch. Also, the company is releasing different preview versions of MySQL, each one implementing a potentially new feature. This approach can ease the job of testing the software before putting it into a production environment, Schwartz said. "If I wanted to test a specific feature, I can test that without worrying about the influence of other features," Schwartz said.

Overall, Schwartz is pleased by the work that Oracle is doing.

Past releases of MySQL tended to have a lot of bugs, which then later had to be patched, he said. Version 5.5, however, which was largely overseen by Oracle, was a clean release and Schwartz expects that version 5.6 will be solid as well.

Lasers could replace spark plugs in car engines

Car engines could soon be fired by lasers instead of spark plugs, researchers say.

A team at the Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics will report on 1 May that they have designed lasers that could ignite the fuel/air mixture in combustion engines, reports BBC.

The approach would increase efficiency of engines, and reduce their pollution, by igniting more of the mixture.

The team is in discussions with a spark plug manufacturer.

Spark plugs only ignite the fuel mixture near the spark gap, reducing the combustion efficiency, and the metal that makes them up is slowly eroded as they age.

But only with the advent of smaller lasers has the idea of laser-based combustion become a practical one.

Ceramic powders

A team from Romania and Japan has now demonstrated a system that can focus two or three laser beams into an engine's cylinders at variable depths.

That increases the completeness of combustion and neatly avoids the issue of degradation with time.

However, it requires that lasers of high pulse energies are used; just as with spark plugs, a great deal of energy is needed to cause ignition of the fuel.

The team has been developing a new approach to the problem: lasers made of ceramic powders that are pressed into spark-plug sized cylinders.

These ceramic devices are lasers in their own right, gathering energy from compact, lower-power lasers that are sent in via optical fibre and releasing it in pulses just 800 trillionths of a second long.

Unlike the delicate crystals typically used in high-power lasers, the ceramics are more robust and can better handle the heat within combustion engines.

The team is in discussions to commercialise the technology with Denso, a major automobile component manufacturer.

HP Unveils EliteBook Mobile Workstations

Hewlett-Packard has introduced a line of mobile workstations that are more durable than previous models and provide additional storage options. The new HP EliteBook w-series includes the 17.3-inch 8760w, the 15.6-inch 8560w, and the 14-inch 8460w. The products are the first with HP's industrial design has a distinctive radial-brushed gunmetal finish, a backlit jewel log, and orange-colored accents, reports Informationweek.

The 8760w has the biggest graphics punch with the choice of an AMD FirePro or Nvidia Quadro professional graphics and up to 4 GB of video memory. The desktop-replacement model can be configured with three hard drives and RAID 5 support. The latter is a first for HP mobile workstations.

The 8560w provides the option of FirePro graphics for 1 GB of video memory or Nvidia Quadro for 2 GB. The 8560w and its bigger brother are available with HP's DreamColor display, which provides more than 1 billion color possibilities.

The 8460w is HP's smallest and lightest mobile workstation. The system starts at just less than five pounds and comes with a 1 GB FirePro.

The latest portable workstations are targeted at designers, animators, and engineers. "As the fastest growing segment of the workstation market, mobile workstations continue to provide value," Efrain Rovira, director of mobile workstations for HP, said in a statement.

All three systems have aluminum-alloy hinges and cast titanium-alloy display latches for more durability than previous EliteBook workstations. The latest products are available with either a second-generation Intel Core i5 or i7 quad-core processor, which provides enough computing power to handle 3-D professional applications. In addition, the systems support up to 32 GB of system memory and the AMD or Nvidia graphics can power up to five independent displays.

Storage capacity options include SATA hard drives or solid-state drives, with up to RAID 5 capability. Available ports include USB 3.0, eSATA, and USB 2.0. The 8760w and 8560w are available with an eight-cell primary battery, while the 8460w comes with either a six- or nine-cell battery.

The new systems are scheduled to be available in the U.S. in May. Prices start at $1,899 for the 8760w, $1,349 for the 8560w, and $1,299 for the 8460w.

New engine sends shock waves through auto industry

Despite shifting into higher gear within the consumer's green conscience, hybrid vehicles are still tethered to the gas pump via a fuel-thirsty 100-year-old invention: the internal combustion engine.

However, researchers at Michigan State University have built a prototype gasoline engine that requires no transmission, crankshaft, pistons, valves, fuel compression, cooling systems or fluids. Their so-called Wave Disk Generator could greatly improve the efficiency of gas-electric hybrid automobiles and potentially decrease auto emissions up to 90 percent when compared with conventional combustion engines, reports Msnbc.

The engine has a rotor that's equipped with wave-like channels that trap and mix oxygen and fuel as the rotor spins. These central inlets are blocked off, building pressure within the chamber, causing a shock wave that ignites the compressed air and fuel to transmit energy.

The Wave Disk Generator uses 60 percent of its fuel for propulsion; standard car engines use just 15 percent. As a result, the generator is 3.5 times more fuel efficient than typical combustion engines.

Researchers estimate the new model could shave almost 1,000 pounds off a car's weight currently taken up by conventional engine systems.

Last week, the prototype was presented to the energy division of the Advanced Research Projects Agency, which is backing the Michigan State University Engine Research Laboratory with $2.5 million in funding.

Michigan State's team of engineers hope to have a car-sized 25-kilowatt version of the prototype ready by the end of the year.

New U.S. computer to be world's fastest

A supercomputer commissioned by the U.S. Department of Energy means the United States will again be home to the fastest computer in the world, reports Spacedaily.

The computer, dubbed "Titan," is predicted to achieve a computation speed 20,000 trillion calculations (20 petaflops) per second, PhysOrg.com reported Wednesday.

If successful, it will surpass China's Tianhe-1A, unveiled last October by the country's National University of Defense and boasting a speed of 2.5 petaflops.

The Titan, to be built by Cray Computer, will become part of a collection of some of the fastest computers in the world at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory facility in Tennessee, joining the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration's Gaea, the National Science Foundation's Kraken and the Department of Energy's current workhorse, the Jaguar.

The Titan is expected to be used by the Energy Department to calculate complex energy systems and will cost the U.S. government approximately $100 million.

The first stage of the Titan computing array is expected to be delivered by the end of this year with the second stage scheduled for sometime next year.

When A Bus Becomes A Satellite

Alphabus has met Alphasat. Europe's largest telecom satellite is taking shape with final assembly and testing ready to begin in Toulouse, France. Planned for launch in late 2012 on Ariane 5, Alphasat will provide advanced mobile communication links for commercial operator Inmarsat.

The Alphabus platform, developed by Astrium and Thales Alenia Space under a joint ESA and French space agency (CNES) contract, is Europe's coordinated response to the increased market demand for larger telecommunication payloads, reports Spacedaily.

A wide range of commercial payloads to provide TV broadcast, broadband multimedia, Internet access and mobile and fixed telecommunication services can be accommodated on Alphabus. Inmarsat's Alphasat, developed in partnership with ESA, will be the platform's first mission.

"The mating took place as planned, preparing the way for the upcoming satellite test campaign," said Stephane Lascar, Alphabus/Alphasat Programme Manager at ESA.Alphabus is now on the commercial market to accommodate missions requiring up to 18 kW of payload power. Improvements will extend the range up to 22 kW.

Alphasat is the first satellite to use the Alphabus platform. It carries a new generation of advanced geomobile communications payload to augment Inmarsat's Broadband Global Area Network service, enabling communications across Europe, Asia, Africa and the Middle East with increased capacity.

Alphasat features a new-generation digital signal processor and a 12 m-diameter antenna. It also carries four technology demonstration payloads developed through ESA.

"The Alphabus/Alphasat Programme is a prime example of a public-private partnership, our new way of working that ESA is pursuing in telecoms," said Magali Vaissiere, ESA Director of Telecommunications and Integrated Applications. "Such initiatives in partnership with satellite operators will foster the development of state-of-the-art technologies to serve the new needs of the worldwide market and Europe's citizens."