Researchers have developed a new bioprinting method that allows researchers to grow different types of living cells at the same time into implants using the same foundational technologies.

The method, developed by a team at Rice University, is an advancement in how living cells are printed that could be used to develop implants that can help heal injuries, among other things, said Antonio Mikos, a professor of bioengineering and chemical and biomolecular engineering at the university.

Mikos led the team that developed the technique, which uses grooves to seed sophisticated, 3D-printed tissue-engineering scaffolds. Previously, these scaffoldswhich are used to grow human tissuecould only have a uniform distribution of cells, he explained.

If we wanted different cell populations at different points in the scaffold, we could not do that, Mikos said in a press statement.

Now researchers can do that through a new process that carves grooves into plastic threads used to build the scaffolds, he said. Scientists then seed the grooves with cells or other bioactive agents to help growth new tissue.

Creating Living Tissue

In the technique, a 3D printer cuts the grooves into a thermoplastic, inserting the cells at the proper temperature and creating a three-dimensional implant--based on medical images--in a single process, researchers said.

The fibers are cylinders that we engrave with a needle to give it a groove as its printing, Rice research scientist Maryam Elizondo said in a press statement. Once the groove is set and cooled just enough, the printer then deposits a cell-infused ink for every fiber for every layer of the scaffold, she said.

It takes about half an hour to completely print a thumbnail-sized implant using the process with the grooved threads, which are about 800 microns wide, Elizondo added.

Biodegradable Implants for Healing

Researchers published a paper on their work in the journal Bioprinting.

The result of the bioprinting method is hard implants that can be surgically inserted to heal bone, cartilage or muscle, Mikos said. Like hydrogels that are currently used as implants inside the body, the biocompatible implants would degrade over time and leave only natural tissue, he said.

The new scaffold-fabrication process has advantages over previous ones because it can protect cells from the heat and shear stresses that can kill them, researchers said. It also provides a way to layer cells in one mechanically stable foundation that ultimately become different kinds of tissue, like bone and cartilage, they said.

The major innovation here is our ability to spatially load a scaffold that is 3D-printed with different cell populations and with different bioactive molecules, Mikos said.

Elizabeth Montalbano is a freelance writer who has written about technology and culture for more than 20 years. She has lived and worked as a professional journalist in Phoenix, San Francisco and New York City. In her free time she enjoys surfing, traveling, music, yoga and cooking. She currently resides in a village on the southwest coast of Portugal.

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Researchers Find "Groovy" Way to Grow Human Tissue - Plastics Today

Posted: Mar. 15, 2020 1:00 am

Accreditations/Certifications

Eric Basinger of Klingner and Associates P.C. has earned his professional land surveyor license from the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation. Basinger, who works in Klingner's Quincy office, has been a survey technician with the firm since 2007. He has a bachelor of science degree in bioengineering and another in psychology, both from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

Dawn Crabtree, a nurse with the Blessing Diabetes Center, has earned certified diabetes care and educational specialist status from the National Certification Board for Diabetes Educators. She has been on the Blessing Hospital nursing staff for 15 years. Crabtree has a bachelor of science in nursing degree from Chamberlain College and an associate degree in nursing from John Wood Community College.

Appointments

Kenneth Reasoner has been named the Hannibal Board of Public Works general manager. He plans to start the job in mid-April. He's now director of management services at City Utilities in Springfield. Reasoner is a certified public accountant and started his career with the Missouri State Auditor's Office in Jefferson City.

Brandi Venvertloh, an associate professor at Blessing-Rieman College of Nursing and Health Sciences, has been appointed pre-licensure bachelor of science in nursing coordinator. She has a bachelor of science degree in nursing and a master of science degree in nursing from the college and a PhD in nursing education from the University of Northern Colorado.

Honors

Gerard Fischer, an American Family Insurance agency owner in Quincy, has been recognized for providing outstanding customer experience under the American Star Excellence in Customer Experience Certification Program. Fischer has been an agency owner since 1995. He also has offices in Godfrey, and Edwardsville, Ill.

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People and Professions: Reported March 15, 2020 - Herald-Whig

Srn FogartyAssistant News Editor

Four Trinity researchers have been awarded a combined total of over 6 million from a Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) scheme that recruits and retains emerging early career researchers.

Ten recipients were honoured today by President Michael D Higgins as part of the President of Ireland Future Research Leaders Programme including three from University College Dublin (UCD), two from Maynooth University and one from the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies (DIAS).

The researchers fields include lung disease, ageing, traumatic brain injury, bowel and gastrointestinal diseases and sensors. The four Trinity researchers are Dr Suzanne Cloonan, Dr David Loane, Prof Neasa OConnor and Prof Roman Romero-Ortuno.

In a press statement, Prof Linda Doyle, Trinitys Dean of Research, said: The SFI President of Ireland Future Research Leader Awards are crucial in attracting talent to Ireland. We are incredibly proud of the four academics who have come to Trinity through this scheme.

The four awardees, Doyle said, have already demonstrated strong leadership in their fields. The research they do will have real impact on peoples lives and I am excited to see what they will accomplish as a result of the support of this scheme.

Programmes like this, she added, are an essential part of creating a balanced research ecosystem, and the broad range of projects that have been supported this year shows the need to ensure that more funding continues to be made available to individual researchers. I extend my sincere congratulations to all this years Future Research Leaders.

In a press statement, Cloonan, whose research is focused on lung and respiratory diseases, said: I am delighted and honoured to receive this prestigious award. It has allowed me to develop a cutting-edge interdisciplinary research programme at Trinity College Dublin, to understand and develop new treatment approaches for Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), a debilitating chronic lung disease that remains the fourth leading cause of death in Ireland.

This work, Cloonan said, will not only place Ireland on the map for world-class COPD research but will also raise much needed awareness for COPD and COPD-related research.

OConnor, an assistant professor of zoology in Trinity, said that I am truly honoured to receive this award and immensely excited to continue our work with a growing team at Trinity College. We will use ecological knowledge to unlock the potential of Irelands marine resources.

She continued: By cultivating seaweed to harness products for bioengineering and biofuels, we will be helping to develop new tools for the treatment of debilitating diseases, such as osteoarthritis, while also combating climate change by enhancing carbon sequestration and also enriching local coastal habitats.

Romero-Ortuno is an associate professor in Medical Gerontology, and works closely with The Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing (TILDA), which is Trinity-based. He said: I am delighted to have received this SFI President of Ireland Future Research Leaders award.

As a clinician scientist, this award will enable me to build the human and computational capability to investigate a highly complex issue that is of immense importance to our ageing society, he added.

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Award-Winning Trinity Scientists to Share Over 6m in Research Funding - The University Times

By Carrie Clark Carlsen

While we have a keynote speaker, we also bring in a commodities outlook guy, an update on crop insurance, some artificial intelligence, and someone from a machinery equipment dealer in New York, explains Shan Hanes, the banks president and CEO.

Weve had an expert panel on everything you wanted to ask your banker but couldnt, he adds with a chuckle. We had bankers up here on stage and it was free reinattack your banker!

Events like Farmer Focus Day are just one way that Americas ag bankers are tackling a perennial farm challenge: improving ag producers business acumen, especially in an era of disruption. Changes in agriculture are going to accelerate over the next 10 years, says David Kohl, an emeritus ag economist at Virginia Techespecially in areas like technology, bioengineering and big data. Agribusinesses are increasing in complexity, and operations are growing in size at a time when many farms are transitioning to the next generation.

We are transitioning from the baby boom generation to Generation X, millennials, pick your generation, and as that changes, technology is changing, the cost of farming is changing, farm sizes are getting biggerand you cant farm the way you used to farm, adds Tony Hotchkiss, EVP for ag banking at Regions Bank. Farmers have done a lot to upgrade the tech they usebut many are still running the farm the way they used to.

I often hear weve never done it that way or Ive never had to do it that way, Hotchkiss explains, speaking at the recent American Bankers Association Agricultural Bankers Conference. Its very important that as bankers we take ownership of this issue and make sure we are introducing concepts and topics, and helping producers understand the new complexity of farming.

In navigating these sweeping changes, Kohl emphasizes that farm business IQ is the common denominator for producer success. And thats an opportunity for ag bankers to team up with customers as their trusted advisersdelivering candid conversations, constructive coaching and community-building events. After all, when ag borrowers develop their business IQ, it pays off for the lender as well.

It all starts with dialogue. Scott Hauseman, a senior ag lender at Fulton Bank in Pennsylvania encourages his team to consider expectations with their producers; ask about accruals; talk about sales, credit quality and exposure; and do stress testing with lots of of what-if questions: If we go to covenants at this level, whats that feel like? Are you comfortable?

You need to be able to talk to your borrower about cost of production, where maybe in past eras we didnt really carebecause in our part of the world we had lots of equity and usually cash flow drove decisioning, he adds. Thats a big change because of things were seeing and the times we are in.

Meanwhile, Hotchkiss instructs his lenders to challenge their customers thinking, have them look at their margins, study statistics based on acreage and calculate the cost of production. If a producer prefers the dirt side of farming, his lender should be asking what hes doing to make sure that the business side is managed properly.

Hard conversations are where things begin, but producers need to move beyond questions and start finding their own answers. Hauseman emphasizes the importance of sharing dataand analytical tools to employ itwith farm customers. His personal philosophy is that if hes making credit decisions on customer financials, he should be willing to give them the spread that he made that decision on.

Shan Hanes agrees. The bank felt that the number-one thing that ag producers were missing was knowing their breakeven costs, he said. Fifteen years ago, Hanes bank developed a breakeven analysis spreadsheet for customers to use. The reason I think thats important is as events happen people can make adjustments to that spreadsheet.

At the beginning of the year, Hanes also has his ag customers write down their projected cash flows, including living expenses, and set objectives for the year. He asks them what they expect the market high and low to be. It forces them to engage in the marketing process, he says.

Hauseman uses coaching models with his loan officers, which he hopes they will use with customers. He asks his lenders: Do you have the right financial statements that are even testable? Or accrual statements?Ive seen that this coaching model goes over very well, Hauseman continues. Ive seen some really good discussions with customers because lenders have been taught some skill and capability levels that they wouldnt have had without that model in place.

Hotchkiss encourages his ag lenders at Regions Bank to use this coaching approach to prove their value as a partner who can do more than lend money. He tells lenders: Share data with your producers, and show them, Based on what was reported, heres what your peers are doing and heres where you are.

Additionally, Regions Bank is employing technology to deliver coaching on succession planning, land trusts, diversification and many other topics. Younger row-crop farmers prefer high-tech interfaces, Hotchkiss says. We are generating more interest with webcasts and podcasts, where we send them links. Theyre watching these little 10-15 minute snippets on very specific topics while they are in their combines.

Events like Farmer Focus Day build on the tough conversations and one-on-one coaching to provide a fun yet educational group dynamic. Another example Hanes uses: the marketing game. Over the course of several weeks, six to eight novice and experienced farmers are intermingled at tables for role-playing and problem solving. Each group is assigned an actual farm operation case study involving a commodity, specific market conditions, financing options and other variables.

In each weekly meeting, new variables are presented, such as developments in world trade, price fluctuations and/or unplanned expenses. During the simulation, Hanes says young and old engage with his lenders and with each otherrooting for and learning from each other, working together to come up with a viable plan for a profitable farm operation.

Hanes was surprised by a corollary outcomeone that has nothing to do with business IQ, but one that lays the groundwork for producer success. We have seen those older farmers who were looking for their next tenant sit at a table and build a relationship, he reflects. They made a friendship, they stayed connected to each other and we were able to provide an environment where they could transition from one generation to the next.

Building farm business IQit brings bankers and farmers closer together.

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Helping Your Ag Customers Improve Their Farm Business IQ - ABA Banking Journal

Close to 10% of the U.S. population, around 30.3 million people, have diabetes. A new treatment delivery system created by bioengineers at the University of North Carolina and theUniversity of California, Los Angeles could help make life easier for them via a smart insulin patch thats about the size of a quarter. All a patient would need to use it would be to slap on a new patch at the start of the day, after which it would monitor and manage glucose levels for the next 24 hours.

It is smart and simple, which means it could help enhance the health and quality of life for people with diabetes, Zhen Gu, the study leader and a professor of bioengineering at the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering, told Digital Trends. It is a smart glucose-responsive insulin release device because it can respond to high blood sugar levels and release only the necessary insulin dosage, thus reducing the risk of hypoglycemia. This is a small and disposable device, so it is very simple and convenient to use; one can remove the patch any time to stop the administration of insulin.

The glucose-monitoring adhesive patch is covered in tiny microneedles, each one less than a millimeter in length. They are made from a glucose-sensing polymer and come pre-loaded with insulin. When the patch is applied, the microneedles penetrate the skin and start measuring blood sugar levels. If the glucose levels increase, the polymer triggers the release of insulin. At the point at which levels return to normal, the patchs insulin delivery also slows down. While this approach still involves pricking the patient with a needle, these needles are much smaller than regular needles. As a result, the patch is less painful than an ordinary injection.

So far, the patch has been successful in studies involving pigs. The researchers were able to use it to successfully control the glucose levels in these animals, which had Type I diabetes, for around 20 hours. Next, the researchers are hoping to progress to further trials, with the goal of commercializing their technology.

This patch has already been accepted by FDAs emerging technology programs for clinical trial applications, Gu said.

A paper describing the research was recently published in the journal Nature Biomedical Engineering.

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Smart microneedle insulin patch could make it easier to treat diabetes - Digital Trends

Baxter(NYSE:BAX) says its income for the past four years may have been overstated by $276 million.

The Deerfield, Ill.based healthcare products company said the figures came out of a previously announced internal probe into its foreign exchange trading practices. That investigation is now substantially complete, the company said in an SEC filing yesterday.

Baxter said its income was over-reported by $40 million for 2016, $117 million for 2017, $77 million for 2018 and $42 million for the first half of 2019. The company said it expects to file restated financial statements, its third- and fourth-quarter 2019 financial reports and its annual report by March 31, 2020.

The problem involved transactions using a foreign exchange rate convention historically applied by the company that was not in accordance with U.S. generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP). The company believes that the use of its previous exchange rate convention to generate non-operating foreign exchange gains and avoid losses had occurred for at least 10 years, Baxter said in yesterdays filing.

Yesterdays SEC filing is an important step forward in our internal investigation, the company said in a statement emailed to MassDevice.

Its important to note that these misstatements of foreign exchange gains and losses are non-operational in nature. This means they are unrelated to our core operations and business results. In fact, our preliminary 2019 results (announced January 11) reflect the fundamental strength of the business globally.

By the end of March, Baxter plans to announce our complete Q3 and Q4 2019 results and submit our restated financial results to the SEC. We take this matter very seriously and are focused on delivering these next milestones by the end of the quarter.

The Street appears to have already priced in Baxters income misstatements. BAX shares are only down slightly today.

This article has been updated with comments from Baxter.

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Baxter probe finds $276 million in overstated income - Mass Device

Blue-green algae are getting their day in the sun not that they need much of it. A new analysis of their molecular makeup could lead to better solar technology and crops that grow just fine with less sunlight.

In a new study in the journal Science Advances, researchers from Yale, Arizona State University, and Penn State University report on structural properties that allow certain blue-green algae to thrive under lower-sunlight conditions. Its the first time that scientists have been able to see these structural properties, offering clues for bioengineering hardier crops and designing more effective solar cells.

Blue-green algae, also called cyanobacteria, are microscopic organisms that grow in both water and terrestrial environments. They contribute as much as half of the photosynthesis taking place on Earth, thanks to their ability to thrive in a wide range of environments. Photosynthesis is the process by which plants and algae generate the atmospheric oxygen that sustains life on the planet.

Certain organisms can live off of light, while also being in the shade. Understanding how that works is remarkable, said Christopher Gisriel, a postdoctoral associate in chemistry at Yale and first author of the study.

Donald Bryant of Pennsylvania State University is the studys senior author.

To find out why cyanobacteria are so successful, the researchers studied Fischerella thermalis, a terrestrial cyanobacteria.

When Fischerella thermalis is deprived of bright, high-energy sunlight (called white light), it switches gears. It instead starts absorbing low-energy sunlight, known as far-red light.

How does it make this switch? Gisriel said its all about the chlorophyll the green pigment responsible for harvesting light within plants. The typical form of chlorophyll, called chlorophyll a, absorbs white light; an alternate form, called chlorophyll f, is able to absorb far-red light.

These organisms that can absorb far-red light, can actually switch back and forth, Gisriel said. If you put them in white light, they only use chlorophyll a, and theyre just like all the other cyanobacteria. But if you move them to the shade, where they have more of this lower-energy, far-red light, they actually switch out some of the chlorophyll as for chlorophyll f, and that allows them to absorb far-red light. Thats a testament to the plasticity of photosynthesis it can adapt to many environments, which I think is a pretty incredible mechanism.

Gisriel said as much as 25% of all cyanobacteria may use far-red light for photosynthesis. It allows them to grow under a forest canopy and beneath other plants on the surface of a pond, he added.

The researchers used a powerful new microscopy technique known as Cryo-EM (cryogenic electron microscopy) to cool samples of Fischerella thermalis and embed them in ice. Cryo-EM gathers thousands of images of sample particles in various orientations and uses computer algorithms to re-assemble the images into a detailed, three-dimensional composite, called a density map.

This method revealed some locations of chlorophyll f molecules present in Fischerella thermalis that are responsible for far-red light adaptation, Gisriel said.

As for future applications, the researchers said the work suggests several possibilities. Perhaps two crops could be grown together, such as tall corn with short alfalfa. Another outcome could be crops that thrive in a wider variety of weather conditions. There also may be applications for new generations of light-harvesting technology, such as photovoltaics.

This is fundamental research that paves the way, potentially, for other things, Gisriel said.

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A science discovery made in the shade - Yale News

In a step toward practical quantum computing, researchers from MIT, Google, and elsewhere have designed a system that can verify when quantum chips have accurately performed complex computations that classical computers cant.

Quantum chips perform computations using quantum bits, called qubits, that can represent the two states corresponding to classic binary bits a 0 or 1 or a quantum superposition of both states simultaneously. The unique superposition state can enable quantum computers to solve problems that are practically impossible for classical computers, potentially spurring breakthroughs in material design, drug discovery, and machine learning, among other applications.

Full-scale quantum computers will require millions of qubits, which isnt yet feasible. In the past few years, researchers have started developing Noisy Intermediate Scale Quantum (NISQ) chips, which contain around 50 to 100 qubits. Thats just enough to demonstrate quantum advantage, meaning the NISQ chip can solve certain algorithms that are intractable for classical computers. Verifying that the chips performed operations as expected, however, can be very inefficient. The chips outputs can look entirely random, so it takes a long time to simulate steps to determine if everything went according to plan.

In a paper published today in Nature Physics, the researchers describe a novel protocol to efficiently verify that an NISQ chip has performed all the right quantum operations. They validated their protocol on a notoriously difficult quantum problem running on custom quantum photonic chip.

As rapid advances in industry and academia bring us to the cusp of quantum machines that can outperform classical machines, the task of quantum verification becomes time critical, says first author Jacques Carolan, a postdoc in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) and the Research Laboratory of Electronics (RLE). Our technique provides an important tool for verifying a broad class of quantum systems. Because if I invest billions of dollars to build a quantum chip, it sure better do something interesting.

Joining Carolan on the paper are researchers from EECS and RLE at MIT, as well from the Google Quantum AI Laboratory, Elenion Technologies, Lightmatter, and Zapata Computing.

Divide and conquer

The researchers work essentially traces an output quantum state generated by the quantum circuit back to a known input state. Doing so reveals which circuit operations were performed on the input to produce the output. Those operations should always match what researchers programmed. If not, the researchers can use the information to pinpoint where things went wrong on the chip.

At the core of the new protocol, called Variational Quantum Unsampling, lies a divide and conquer approach, Carolan says, that breaks the output quantum state into chunks. Instead of doing the whole thing in one shot, which takes a very long time, we do this unscrambling layer by layer. This allows us to break the problem up to tackle it in a more efficient way, Carolan says.

For this, the researchers took inspiration from neural networks which solve problems through many layers of computation to build a novel quantum neural network (QNN), where each layer represents a set of quantum operations.

To run the QNN, they used traditional silicon fabrication techniques to build a 2-by-5-millimeter NISQ chip with more than 170 control parameters tunable circuit components that make manipulating the photon path easier. Pairs of photons are generated at specific wavelengths from an external component and injected into the chip. The photons travel through the chips phase shifters which change the path of the photons interfering with each other. This produces a random quantum output state which represents what would happen during computation. The output is measured by an array of external photodetector sensors.

That output is sent to the QNN. The first layer uses complex optimization techniques to dig through the noisy output to pinpoint the signature of a single photon among all those scrambled together. Then, it unscrambles that single photon from the group to identify what circuit operations return it to its known input state. Those operations should match exactly the circuits specific design for the task. All subsequent layers do the same computation removing from the equation any previously unscrambled photons until all photons are unscrambled.

As an example, say the input state of qubits fed into the processor was all zeroes. The NISQ chip executes a bunch of operations on the qubits to generate a massive, seemingly randomly changing number as output. (An output number will constantly be changing as its in a quantum superposition.) The QNN selects chunks of that massive number. Then, layer by layer, it determines which operations revert each qubit back down to its input state of zero. If any operations are different from the original planned operations, then something has gone awry. Researchers can inspect any mismatches between the expected output to input states, and use that information to tweak the circuit design.

Boson unsampling

In experiments, the team successfully ran a popular computational task used to demonstrate quantum advantage, called boson sampling, which is usually performed on photonic chips. In this exercise, phase shifters and other optical components will manipulate and convert a set of input photons into a different quantum superposition of output photons. Ultimately, the task is to calculate the probability that a certain input state will match a certain output state. That will essentially be a sample from some probability distribution.

But its nearly impossible for classical computers to compute those samples, due to the unpredictable behavior of photons. Its been theorized that NISQ chips can compute them fairly quickly. Until now, however, theres been no way to verify that quickly and easily, because of the complexity involved with the NISQ operations and the task itself.

The very same properties which give these chips quantum computational power makes them nearly impossible to verify, Carolan says.

In experiments, the researchers were able to unsample two photons that had run through the boson sampling problem on their custom NISQ chip and in a fraction of time it would take traditional verification approaches.

This is an excellent paper that employs a nonlinear quantum neural network to learn the unknown unitary operation performed by a black box, says Stefano Pirandola, a professor of computer science who specializes in quantum technologies at the University of York. It is clear that this scheme could be very useful to verify the actual gates that are performed by a quantum circuit [for example] by a NISQ processor. From this point of view, the scheme serves as an important benchmarking tool for future quantum engineers. The idea was remarkably implemented on a photonic quantum chip.

While the method was designed for quantum verification purposes, it could also help capture useful physical properties, Carolan says. For instance, certain molecules when excited will vibrate, then emit photons based on these vibrations. By injecting these photons into a photonic chip, Carolan says, the unscrambling technique could be used to discover information about the quantum dynamics of those molecules to aid in bioengineering molecular design. It could also be used to unscramble photons carrying quantum information that have accumulated noise by passing through turbulent spaces or materials.

The dream is to apply this to interesting problems in the physical world, Carolan says.

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How to verify that quantum chips are computing correctly - MIT News

All 56 victims of the new virus died in China, but the number of cases has already exceeded 2 thousand persons around the world.

From a new type of coronavirus 2019-nCoV has already killed 56 people. This is with reference to the data published by the Chinese authorities, reports the Chronicle.info with reference to .net.

The data also suggest that all the deaths recorded in China, but more than 2 million people worldwide have been infected with the novel coronavirus.

President XI Jinping said during the Politburo meeting that China faced a serious situation, and health authorities worldwide are struggling to prevent a pandemic.

Recall that in 25 provinces of China declared the highest level of emergency response related to public health. The total population in these areas exceeds 1.2 billion people.

It is known that the virus has spread abroad, including to South Korea, Japan, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, USA, France and Australia.

Coronaviruses are genetically similar group of viruses that infect higher animals (mammals, birds, many reptiles), including humans.

In this family there are already six pathogenic for the human species: sometimes, this infection is asymptomatic, sometimes manifested in the form of a cold. In severe cases, the infection causes pneumonia, which can result in death of the patient.

Scientists have found that the new coronavirus 2019-nCoV is a kind of SARS virus (severe acute respiratory syndrome or SARS), which also emerged in China in 2002-2003 affected more than eight thousand people in 37 countries. Then killed 774 people. He was the seventh of the dangerous strain.

Coronaviruses have come to man from animals, presumably from bats. The likely focus of the spread 2019-nCoV is the seafood market in Wuhan, which is on the eve of the Chinese New year was full of wild animals: foxes, wolves, bats and even viverrini.

Most of the first hospitalized patients were somehow connected with the market of Wuhan. Scientists are not exactly revealed animals that are carriers of 2019-nCoV.

A group of Chinese scientists under the leadership Singana Lee from Wuhan University bioengineering has put forward his version of events: bats infected your coronavirus snakes, and their body two viruses exchanged their plots.

And about two years ago there was a hybrid virus 2019-nCoV, which by December 2019 reached out to people. Estimated owners researchers believe two snakes: the South China MNOGOPROFIL krayt and Chinese Cobra. In favor of this theory is the fact that both of them were sold at the Wuhan seafood market.

However, researchers from the Wuhan Institute of Virology has allocated the 2019 coronavirus-nCoV have a very sick patient and said that the closest structure to the coronaviruses of bats.

Also in the journal Nature has published an editorial with comments virologists from around the world. They all agree that snakes are unlikely to be the source of the coronavirus. Most experts shodyatsya the opinion that the virus came from a mammal.

In early January, Chinese scientists published in the database GenBank complete genome 2019-nCoV, to help doctors in other countries to identify the disease.

Under the microscope the virion coronaviruses appears as an oval with many small spines, obrazovannyh a special protein, which provides the fusion of the virus with the cell membrane of the attacked organism.

It is still unknown whether the virus is transmitted from person to person by airborne droplets. While the transmission is limited to family groups and health workers caring for the infected.

Michael Letko, and Vincent Munster of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and infectious diseases found that 2019-nCoV, like its predecessor SARS enters the cage through the human ACE2 protein.

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The number of cases of coronavirus in the world has exceeded 2 thousand persons - http://www.MICEtimes.asia

Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati Recruitment 2020

Applications are invited for a Walk-in-interview for the following post(s) in the project entitled, Investigating the role of peroxisomes in Parkinson?s disease at the Department of Biosciences & Bioengineering, IIT Guwahati.

Post Name: JRF(GATE)

Posts: 1

Salary: 37210.00

Venue: Conference Room, BSBE

Date: 03 Feb 2020 (Monday)Time: 4 PM

Selection process: Candidates have to appear in the Walk-in-Interview along with an application/CV on plain paper giving details of all educational qualifications, experience, contact address, phone no., Email, etc. and submit photocopies of relevant documents at the time of interview on 03 Feb 2020 (Monday) at 4 PM. Venue: Conference Room, BSBE. Selection will be based on the performance of the candidate in the interview. Candidates will not be sent any call letters separately. An advance copy of the CV may be sent to the Principal Investigator.

Details: Click Here

Also Read: Assam University Recruitment Multiple Vacancy 2020

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Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati Recruitment 2020 - The Sentinel Assam

By Jonny Lupsha, News Writer

According to The University of Richmond website, the rats success in operating the vehicles depended in part on their environment. Rats housed in a complex, enriched environment (i.e., environment with interesting objects to interact with) learned the driving task, but rats housed in standard laboratory cages had problems learning the task, Professor Kelly Lambert said. This lends to the theory that enriching environments assist the brain in learning new tasks and behaviors. Neuroplasticitythe brains ability to learnseems to be far higher in rodents than once believed.

Neuroplasticity refers to how the brain learns, unlearns, and re-learns behaviors. Of course, there are behaviors we learn to how to do and there are functions of the brain that we do inherently, which are automatic.

We divide wiring functions of the human brain into three categories, said Dr. John Medina, Affiliate Professor of Bioengineering at the University of Washington School of Medicine.

The first category is called experience-independent wiring, he said. These neural circuits perform tasks like regulating our heartbeats and keeping our lungs working. Theyre called experience-independent because they dont need to be taught.

Second is experience-dependent circuitry. According to Dr. Medina, things that require learning, such as speaking a second language, are governed by our experience-dependent circuitry. They depend on experience to make their way into our grey matter.

The final category of how our brains are wired is called experience-expectant wiring, which is like a hybrid of the first two categories. Here, the brain is internally hardwired to expect some kind of external input, some kind of experience, Dr. Medina said. Then it finishes its hard-wiring. The clearest example of experience-expectant wiring is vision.

The visual system is not fully developed at birth. It requires photic exposureliterally light getting into the eyes after birthto finish wiring.

According to Dr. Medina, neuroscientist Don Hebb is responsible for our understanding of neurons in the brain and how the brain learns behaviors, unlearns them, and also re-learns behaviors in place of earlier learned behaviors.

He said that when two neurons synaptically connected to each other fire repeatedly, molecular alterations occur in both, Dr. Medina said. As a result, their relationship strengthens. The two are now electrically connected more strongly than they were before the repetitions happened.

However, this can happen between more than two neurons, leading to an entire cluster of neurons that fire together to initiate a thought or behavior pattern. Conversely, when two neurons fail to ignite together, the connection between them dies off and we unlearn a behavior or thought.

Taking this example to its logical conclusion, the connections between our neurons can change over time and we can learn new behaviors to replace old ones. If youve only met someone once and have forgotten their name, but you see them regularly, you may associate their face with what you think their name is. The neuron associated with their face may fire with the neuron associated with that name.

However, if you call them that name and they correct you, those two neurons wont fire together as much anymore. Instead, the neuron that holds their face in your memory may fire together with a new neuronthat of their actual name. This happens all the time as we adapt to new behaviors. We unlearn one thing and replace it with another in a kind of subconscious trial and error.

And if youre a rat behind the wheel of an automobile, your neurons may be wiring, firing, and rewiring like fireworks on the Fourth of July.

Dr. John J. Medina contributed to this article. Dr. Medina is an Affiliate Professor of Bioengineering at the University of Washington School of Medicine. He holds a Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from Washington State University. In 2004, he was appointed to the rank of Affiliated Scholar at the National Academy of Engineering.

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Rats Learn to Drive Tiny Cars, Proving Rodent Neuroplasticity - The Great Courses Daily News

It may be difficult to envision, but there is a potential future be it 10, 20 or even 30 years down the line where humans are able to plan a cozy vacation into space, blast by a series of satellites that now provide them with Internet access and have their most serious illnesses treated by allowing bioengineers to alter their DNA.

Its one possible future that proactive investors, even those in typically reactive institutional settings, have begun to place large and risky bets on becoming a reality.

In April, the Ontario Teachers Pension Plan created a new department called the Teachers Innovation Platform that has a mandate to invest in disruptive tech and made its first big splash in June by backing Elon Musks SpaceX. The pension plan has particular interest in the companys Starlink project, one that aims to fire more than 11,000 satellites into low orbit, interlink them all and have them act as a new provider of Internet connectivity.

For investing ... you want to look 15 to 20 years down the line and say: 'Is this still going to be impacting peoples' lives?

The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board has put a similar emphasis on investing in disruptive technology, announcing in late 2018 that it had made a private investment in Zoox, a California-based company that aims to operate a fleet of robo-taxis. Only months ago, the pension plan bought US$162 million worth of Skyworks Solutions Inc., a semiconductor firm creating chips that will allow the next wave of phones to work in 5G networks.

As for retail investors, theyve likely never had as many options to hedge their portfolio toward the future. The 2019 IPO market offered them even more, bringing a basket of futuristic options to the market, including Beyond Meat Inc., a producer of plant-based meat, and Virgin Galactic Holdings Inc., the latest brainchild of Richard Branson, which is developing spacecraft that may allow for the development of a space tourism sector.

But the investors buying these stocks arent buying them with the hope that theyll hit their peak in 2020.

You have to recognize the world is changing, said Hans Albrecht, the portfolio manager for Horizons ETFs Industry 4.0 fund. Theres nothing wrong in investing in Pokemon cards if theyre hot now or whatever the latest trend may be, but thats a trade. For investing you want to look 15 to 20 years down the line and say: Is this still going to be impacting peoples lives?

It wont be long, Albrecht suspects, before his coffee maker is able to receive signals from his mug that tell it to begin brewing a new serving once hes three-quarters of the way through his first cup in the morning.

If that scenario sounds too futuristic, its one that only scratches the surface, he said. When hes running low on espresso packages, a chip in his pantry keeping track of stock may be able to automatically order more from Amazon, which at that point, may have implemented one-hour shipping, to ensure hell never run out.

Thousands of consumers already have access to smart home technology through Google Home or Amazon.com Inc.s Alexa, which allow for the linking of devices such as thermostats, lights and televisions. Its advancements in artificial intelligence and edge computing, which will effectively replace the cloud and allow for individual items in a home to process data, that will bring this technology into the future.

Figuring out how to play technology like edge computing which may very well become mainstream in a decade isnt exactly simple.

Investors will have two options: they can bet on the end point user of the technology in Albrechts coffee scenario, that would mean investing in the company that produces the coffee maker or they can look to the firms that are developing the components that power it.

Albrecht leans towards the latter, suggesting that there would be far too much competition among the end point companies while there would only be a handful of leaders on the components side. A company like Analog Devices Inc., may play a central role in the implementation of that technology because its building everything from the sensors and their networks to processors.

Investors may be able to apply similar logic with 5G, according to CIBC World Markets tech strategist Todd Coupland.

Consumers will likely only begin to see the wide rollout of 5G, which would enable devices to operate at speeds that as much as 100 times faster than the current 4G tech, in 2020. That means that it might be a bit early to invest in device producers such as Apple Inc. or Samsung Electronics Co Ltd. for that exposure. Instead, Coupland suggested investors eye a company like Keysight Technologies Inc., which builds the equipment that carriers have been using to test out their services ahead of launch.

Goldman Sachs expects 50 million to 120 million 5G devices to be active in 2020 and if that should be the case, components manufacturers in Qualcomm Inc. and Marvell Technology Group Ltd. may warrant attention as would providers such as Nokia Ovj, which already has 50 deals in place to install its radio access equipment, AirScale, around the world. The equipment supports multiple frequencies and allows for a quick transition over to 5G.

That list doesnt include the Canadian telcos and for good reason.

In Canada, Rogers and Bell, their attitude is: See how it goes in the U.S. and well be at least one year behind, Coupland said.

5Gs full potential likely wont be reached for a decade, he said, and the futuristic possibilities it opens up will likely only be reached in the second half. When combined with the power of quantum computing, managing a fleet of self-driving cars and, who knows, removing traffic lights from the streets becomes a possibility, according to Christian Weedbrook, the CEO of Toronto-based quantum computing company Xanadu.

Weedbrooks company has gained the attention of Georgian Partners, a private-sector venture capital firm that has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in upstart Canadian tech companies.

What makes quantum computing, a draw for Jason Brenier, Georgians vice-president of strategy, is its ability to solve previously unsolvable problems.

Weedbrook imagines a future where quantum computers control hundreds of autonomous vehicles for Uber Inc. or Lyft Inc. and provide each individual car with the fastest route to its destination, analyzing traffic, time a trip perfectly so that red lights can be mostly or completely avoided, and in the case of a pool scenario, figure out how to do that with multiple stops.

Investing in early stage technology comes with its challenges. Because Georgian focuses on private investments, there is no stock performance to point to and not much in the way of fundamentals to rely on.

Many of these tech companies that are seeking funding from the firm may show promise but wont pan out in the future. Brenier knows this and says thats one of the reasons why Georgian has its own scientists on staff.

Instead of making blind bets on the future, Georgian turns to its applied research and development team to identify new opportunities based on new academic research and to even conduct their own in order to determine whether a new idea is actually viable.

That gives us some unique insight into how some of these things are taking off, how practical they are from an investment perspective and determining the timing of some of them, Brenier said.

The Georgian team is futurist, but theres still a limit on how far in advance they want to support a new wave of tech. We dont want to work on things that take 20 years to make a breakthrough, Brenier said.

Where breakthroughs may be even more rare for futurist investors, but the potential returns all the sweeter is in health care. The possibilities here, especially when tech plays a part of the equation, appear to be boundless.

Albrecht sees the potential in robots being able to perform surgery on humans. The portfolio manager highlighted Intuitive Surgical Inc. and its da Vinci Surgical System as an example of how this is already occurring. Through a console that offers them a 3D view of the surface area theyll be operating on, surgeons can use controllers to perform procedure with four robotic arms that offer a greater range of motion than human limbs.

Intuitive doesnt just sell the machines, it sells the accessories such as scalpels that are replaceable and need to be repeatedly ordered. So the more da Vinci units it sells, the more it opens itself up for further gains to its bottom line through accessory sales.

The next step, Albrecht said, is for this technology to allow surgeons to perform surgeries around the world remotely. After thats accomplished, humans may be removed from the equation altogether with AI.

You take the smartest doctors in the world and they might just have the slightest tremor in their hand and might not get it perfect, but a machine will come as close to that as possible, he said.

Health care now makes up about a quarter of the CIBC Global Technology Fund, which is co-managed by Michal Marszal, who has a particular interest in gene therapy.

The technology may still be in development, but Marszal said scientists will soon be able to treat certain conditions, specifically those that plague humans as a result of mutated genes, by biologically engineering new sequences to replace them.

Take haemophilia, a condition that reduces the ability of a persons blood to clot. Treating haemophilia A, which is caused due to a deficiency of a protein called factor VII, may soon be possible by removing cells from the patient, biologically engineering gene sequences with the protein in them and reinserting them.

Gilead Sciences Inc., a company that is in Marszals mutual fund, is working on gene therapy that might even be able to fight cancer. According to Marszal, the process involves removing immune cells from a human body and genetically modifying them so that they become supercharged and are better positioned to fight cancer.

The returns on investment in successful therapies are extremely high, Marszal said. Thats really the next decade or 25 years in medicine.

Thinking that far ahead may be difficult for the average investor, who is often concerned with year-end returns. But it might be worth stopping as some futurists do, even during a quiet moment like a morning coffee, to consider just how different the world will look in a decade and perhaps selfishly, how theres profit to be made from it.

Email: vferreira@nationalpost.com | Twitter:

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From space tourism to robo-surgeries: Investors are betting on the future like there's no tomorrow - Financial Post

As a clinical mentor for the Bioengineering Senior Capstone Design course, Stanford urologist Craig Comiter, MD's first job was to write a story about a problem he had observed in his practice. Students in the course, all senior undergraduate bioengineering majors, would read several such vignettes, choose an unmet need within one of them, and then work in teams to develop a solution.

Comiter wrote about something he saw all the time; the strugglesof patients who have to self-catheterize in order to urinate because of abrain, spinal cord, or nerve problem. His scenario described a young woman whowas paralyzed from the waist down. He detailed the arduous process she had toperform multiple times each day to empty her bladder, and included the frequenturinary tract infections (UTI's) she contracted as a result.

Students Maria Iglesias, Amanda Urke, Gabe Ho, and Issac Justice all chose Comiter's scenario. "We were drawn to the idea of wanting to improve the patient's quality of life," said Iglesias. "While we personally couldn't really understand what she was going through, we recognized that our lives would be very different if we had this amount of difficulty with a simple task that we take for granted."

To help them understand the patient's perspective, the team created a survey that asked patients to rate the difficulty of each step of the procedure. The results made it clear that the procedure was hardest for women, especially those with impaired mobility. Steps included finding a private place, transferring out of the wheelchair, removing clothing, cleaning the vaginal area, inserting a catheter into the urethra, and then reversing the process. For all women, the single biggest problem was locating the opening of urethra, which often requires the patient to strap a mirror onto her leg.

"Not only does this prevent some women from being able toself-catheterize, it's also one of the major reasons females get UTIs," saidComiter. "They miss the urethra and contact the vagina, contaminating thecatheter."

"The responses made us think about how, through the mechanism of use, we could help the patient be certain they were on target," said Urke. She added, "It also brought home the importance of conducting surveys and actually speaking to patients before you get into the design of a solution."

Based on this understanding, the team decided that the most intuitive approach for women would be to use the vagina as an anatomical landmark to help locate the urethra. With input from Comiter and course co-instructor Richard Fan, PhD, they developed more than 40 prototypes of a small plastic device with a handle, a vaginal insert, and a guide that holds the catheter.When the user holds the device with the insert just inside the vagina, the catheter guide is lined up at the urethral opening, and the patient is able to slide the catheter into place.

Next the team created a pair of shorts with a faux vagina and urethra and used it to test most promising prototypes on themselves and on volunteers, even performing the procedure blindfolded. By the end of the spring quarter, they had a working prototype -- the Cath Path.

They entered an NIH-sponsored biomedical engineering competition and won a top prize, prompting them to think seriously about taking their solution forward into patient care. They are currently exploring regulatory pathways and planning next steps including usability testing with real patients.

"It's a device that could help many people," said Comiter. "While self-catheterization is still a complex process for women, this simple, low-cost approach can save time, make a frustrating process easier, and decrease the risk of infection."

The experience showcased the benefits of interdisciplinary collaboration, he said:

When doctors think infection, our solution is antibiotics. When these engineering students heard about infection, their response was, 'Let's find a way to prevent the contamination of the catheter in the first place.' I was the mentor here, but I think I learned as much as the students did. Working with them made me a better problem-solver.

Photo of the team at Biodesign's Health Technology Showcase by Stacey McCutcheon

Link:
It's go-time: a doctor and student engineers work to make catheterization easier - Scope

It took years for Emilio Alarcon and his University of Ottawa Heart Institute research team to fully believe what they were seeing that a gel they had developed containing human collagen was repairing damaged hearts in mice.

They repeated their research study several times, coming up with randomized, blinded results, just to make sure the findings were correct.

We had to complete it many times because we couldnt believe it, he said.

The results of that work, five years in the making, were published in the prestigious journal Nature Communications on Friday. Alarcon and Erik Suuronen, a scientist in the division of cardiac surgery and director of its biomaterials and regeneration program, are lead authors.

The injectable material is the first in the world prepared using human collagen and is being called an unprecedented leap forward in addressing repair of cardiac muscle after a heart attack.

The work is still years away from clinical use on humans, but the findings are expected to attract attention because of the potential of the gel, which is designed to be injected into the hearts of patients with damaged heart tissue after a heart attack.

Alarcon said his team believes it performs better than any of the cell-based therapies or drug treatments currently available. The treatment works, he said, by increasing the number of cardiac muscle cells and blood capillaries in the tissue around damaged areas of the heart. The gel also helps bring more wound-healing cells to the site to promote repair.

Heart diseases are the leading cause of death around the world, and coronary artery disease, which can lead to a heart attack, is the most common.

About 10 per cent of people who have a heart attack (or myocardial infarction) will develop scarring and thickening of the heart wall that can lead to heart failure, which has a high mortality rate and its treatment is costly to the health system.

Alarcon noted that patients in remote areas without easy access to health care and those who dont seek immediate treatment or dont know they had a heart attack are more likely to suffer heart muscle damage. The treatment being developed by the heart institute team restored heart function in mice with scarred cardiac muscle.

The heart institutes BioEngineering and Therapeutic Solutions (BEaTS) team are hopeful their human collagen gel will one day lead to a recovery of heart function and prevent heart failure in humans, said Alarcon, but more testing is required.

The study published Friday is a first step toward that potential treatment, he said.

In Canada, approximately 600,000 patients live with advanced heart failure and health-care costs amount to more than $2.8 billion every year. As people live longer, both the number of patients and the cost of treatments are likely to increase.

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Ottawa-based treatment a leap forward in addressing heart failure - Edmonton Sun

GOTEBORG Oct 25, 2019 (Thomson StreetEvents) -- Edited Transcript of Xvivo Perfusion AB earnings conference call or presentation Thursday, October 24, 2019 at 12:00:00pm GMT

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the XVIVO Perfusion Third Quarter 2019 Report Webcast. Today, I am pleased to present Magnus Nilsson, CEO; and Christoffer Rosenblad, CFO.

I will now hand you over to Magnus Nilsson. Sir, please go ahead.

Thank you, and welcome to the 28th quarterly report of an independent XVIVO Perfusion. And this is, as we said, the interim report for the third quarter.

Next slide, please. So the highlights. It's been an important quarter for us, and I'll try to put you into the picture.

Q3, first time, rolling 12 months nondurable sales over SEK 200 million. We have received a patent approval for the Perfadex Plus, and we have started a very interesting collaboration to develop fast diagnostic tests using biomarkers at -- to be used in EVLP and similar.

And repeating for the full year, the most important highlights is, of course, the PMA for XPS and STEEN Solution, the patents for the heart preservation fluids. The positive results of the clinical safety studies in Lund on the heart device and the deepening -- deepened collaboration or cooperation with Lung Bioengineering.

So next slide, please. So the sales highlights for the quarter was that we sold the second XPS to China, which is really interesting market. I'll come back to that. We -- also Lung Bioengineering has acquired their second XPS when they opened their new EVLP center, and we have a continued stable gross margin during growth for the quarter and for the year. We can see for the year continued strong sales all over the year, nondurable goods, 25% in Q3. Warm nondurable growth rolling -- is rolling on a 40% level year-to-year. And we see also continuation of the positive sales trend for cold preservation, which is an indication that the global market for transplantation is growing also outside that main markets.

Next slide, please. So some more numbers here. The profit and loss statement to be highlighted is, of course, the net sales, but then the -- again, the stable gross margin of nondurable goods. That's the important gross margin, of course. And we are running on a level pretty similar level on the selling expenses. We built up continuously our sales force, which is more of a customer support. That is technical advisers being out on the clinics, helping them to perform EVLP.

We can also see that we are a little bit higher R&D. Same thing here. We developed our clinical teams since we are in a situation where we start up a number of clinical studies. And then that we're still doing all this intensive investment in R&D and built up our organization still can keep a very good profit level -- counted on the EBITDA level. There is one item affecting comparison. And that is, of course, as I said before, that we have mirrored bonus program for the employees outside Sweden, which is based on the share price, mirroring the Swedish warrant program.

Next slide, please. So we are in an intensive phase of the company, where we strengthen ourselves in hiring new competencies and capacities, such as our first transplant surgeons and other clinical trial experts. So the buildup of the heart and PrimECC teams that will run the multicenter studies over the world, and we're also extending the team supporting the Lung EVLP market development.

Next slide, please. So a few words about the Chinese transplant market. It is a very fast-growing market, a lot of activities. I think more than 10 new centers have been certified to do transplants in China. It's growing from relatively low level But with a very high speed, and it has been about a 50% increase during the last years and we -- something like that probably this year as well. So therefore, it's very encouraging that we now have placed our second or sold our second EVLP in China to the second largest transplant clinic in China, the -- one of the major hospitals in Beijing. And this clinic makes about 100 -- over 100 transplant last year. And you can -- necessity they are increasing very rapidly, and they're just being trained actually these days. We -- just yesterday, I got a report that the training was -- the first training practice run was performed in Beijing. So this continues to be one of the more exciting markets where we focus on, and we'll focus on in the future.

Then another thing, the important product for us, obviously, is Perfadex. And as you know, we have a upgraded ready-to-use product that -- so that -- which is more convenient and safe for the patients. You don't have to mix at site. It's now been patented in Europe, which is very encouraging. And we have submitted patent applications in all important markets.

Next slide, please, #8. XVIVO and MyCartis collaboration. MyCartis is a company specialized in developing fast analysis tools and assays, so we will -- we are now part in a collaboration, where we will -- they will help us on developing these assays, which can be used and generate results within 20 minutes at bedside, so to speak, on the EVLP, which is thought to be very important in assessing and identifying how good lungs and other organs are after XVIVO perfusion. So these biomarkers and this fast evaluation of biomarkers has a potential to increase the number of EVLP and also increase the, obviously, the chances of positive outcomes for the patients.

Next slide. We continue to cooperate with Lung Bioengineering, as I said. And they -- and not only with Bioengineering. Actually with another entities in United Therapeutics. So they have opened now their second EVLP center in Jacksonville, Florida, in addition to their center in Maryland. And we collaborate both -- we're helping them to set up using the XPS EVLP process and also are cooperating in marketing of these services on centers so that the centers can choose to either use EVLP, if they have an EVLP system themselves; or if they want to use these services, which uses our products, but at the United therapeutics or Lung Bioengineering sites. We also have started collaborating with them in their research on the xenotransplantation.

Next slide, please. So this part is about the R&D pipeline, which we drive with high speed and a lot of focus to ensure future growth and to employ the technology and the experience we've had drawn on lungs into other organs.

So the investment in future EVP (sic) [EVLP] growth. So this is about developing the EVLP or the lung indication to use it more in order to get more organs available to the patients. So we developed the XPS technology with new sensors, and we also then again want to develop markers to use -- to be used in conjunction with the running of the XPS.

We're also looking at the clinical development, in expanded use of donation after circulatory death. That is the usual DCD lungs. And also for anti-infection therapy, we can -- we see now one of the results of that support is the recent publication on virus risk hepatitis C reduction during EVLP. And we also developed further the EVLP protocol for the ventilation strategy; organ proning, which is to turning it to get perfusion on all sides, et cetera. So a lot of development going on in order to make the EVLP even better in determining which organs that can be used. We also investigate the immunological response to EVLP, targeting both short-term organ function and long-term survival.

Next slide. So if you look at employing this technology on new organs. We have, of course, our #1 priority, the heart transplant project, which is about optimizing preservation to prolong the time outside the body, because we know that a heart is very demanding in the sense it can only survive 4 to 5 hours outside the body today. And we have the aim to keep the organ in better shape during the process and, therefore, both being able to use older donors and also to extend the time outside the body to be able to use organs from further away than today.

The #2 priority is the PrimECC. It's about an optimized solution. So it's based on our knowledge and technology around Perfadex and STEEN Solution to have an optimized priming solution to reduce the known side effects.

And as a third priority and a lower priority, but still very interesting is to see how we can employ the STEEN Solution technology on the liver and kidney transplants. We have been supporting that for a time coming -- for a time where in clinical studies, STEEN Solution with some additives has been used, both in liver and in kidneys today clinically. The fourth priority, which is a relatively low priority, but may be interesting in the longer-term future is perfusion of the isolated organs and tissues.

Next slide, please. So again the heart transplantation. It's a heart perfusion and preservation solution and device developed by Professor Steen originally. And that first device prototype has been used in a number of preclinical trials, where he's shown -- showed that this non-oxygenated time, called NIHP, results in a better organ quality. So the idea is to keep the organ resting, but profused with this new solution in a low temperature, reducing the metabolism, which then facilitates a longer preservation time. And it's shown up to 24 hours in pigs in publications and even longer.

It's also being used in xenotransplantation from pig to monkey. And using that device, they were able to increase the survival up to 6 months. This was never been done before. That was published in Nature in December of last year. And after that, the technology has been employed in Lund University Hospital in a safety clinical trial. The first 6 patients were evaluated after 6 months and partly public -- publicized, where they can said that the heart can be safely preserved with this NIHP technology, resulting in successful transplantations and the reduced risk of ischemic induced reperfusion injury. More patients have been included with this, and the study is ongoing in parallel to all other activities.

Next slide please, 14. So we've been working very hard now with a number of activities, especially the clinical team build up, ramp-up of machine, disposable and solution production. And we see a huge interest in worldwide and the clinical participation in the clinical trials, both in Europe, U.S. and Australia. And on preparations for all these 3 are ongoing and Europe, obviously, first. We have several authorities that have cleared this, but we will -- we're looking to have all centers -- all regulatory authorities, all centers clearing the protocol before we start the inclusion. This moves on very well. And of course, the important is not the first patient in. The important is the last patient out, so that means that we need to have all the centers up and running. That's the most important, and that's what we're focusing on.

Next slide, please. PrimECC. So PrimECC background, just for those who have not heard it. Priming solutions are used in all runs of heart-lung machines, and they're primed before they can -- you start using them in the patient. And that means that about 1.5 liter of blood of the patient comes into the circuit of the heart-lung machine and that 1.5 liter of priming solution goes into the patient. That has -- of the solution used today, there is a number of known side effects of the solutions used today. About 600,000 to 700,000 of these operations are done worldwide each year. And the whole idea now is that the PrimECC has been developed to alleviate these side effects. That's the whole idea of this project. And we have done quite a bit so far.

And next slide please, 16. So it's a patent in all major markets, it's CE marked. We have done a clinical study of 40 plus 40 patients, which show that PrimECC is safe to use. It also show that we can improve fluid balance, reduction of side effects using the heart-lung machines primed with PrimECC.

So what we do right now is to scale up both the production. We had to change the bag for regulatory reasons to eco-friendly bag, and we've done all that validation of production. We have submitted that -- all that technical file to the notified body, which are looking at the file. And as soon as they are done, we can then start up the clinical trial. We have meanwhile also built up the clinical and regulatory team around the product, PrimECC product, which will run than the clinical trial and the regulatory implications.

So the whole idea here is to make a few, 1 or 2 studies, to get more clinical documentation showing then and developing the effects of this in reducing the side effects. It's a high interest from the clinics to participate in these studies.

Next slide, please. So we look forward. We continue to focus on the thoracic transplantation. That's primary focus. It's lungs, obviously, further to support the EVLP technology and clinical practice of using it; the heart preparation for multicenter studies in all major markets, that's U.S., Europe and Australia; and also -- and PrimECC preparation for the multicenter study, waiting for the regulatory authorities' go ahead.

We are looking at the abdominal transplantation, a new indication. It's a secondary focus, but we feel it's very interesting to see how we can use the technology and the experience further into organs in abdominal organs like liver and kidney. And we have been supporting with good results the clinical trials using STEEN Solution in these organs, and we further investigate how to employ the technology further and see how we can create value of what we've done in lungs and the hearts to this important and interesting indications.

So the long-term goals: Solidify the position in thoracic surgery. And then build new business using the STEEN Solution technology in liver and kidney. That's long term goal.

And we are open for questions, please.

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Questions and Answers

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Operator [1]

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(Operator Instructions) Our first question comes from the line of Daniel Albin from Danske Bank.

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Daniel Albin, Danske Bank Markets Equity Research - Research Analyst [2]

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Can you hear me, guys?

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Magnus Nilsson, Xvivo Perfusion AB (publ) - CEO & MD [3]

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Yes.

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Daniel Albin, Danske Bank Markets Equity Research - Research Analyst [4]

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Yes. Good. Okay. So I have a couple of questions. My first question is maybe a bit more of a technicality, but looking at the sales of cold preservation, this quarter seems to be a pretty good one. I'm just wondering if you could elaborate a bit more on the reasons behind this strength. And how we should view the growth rates going forward? You're mentioning that the global market is growing. Is it growing more than the 6% last few years? Or how should we view this?

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Magnus Nilsson, Xvivo Perfusion AB (publ) - CEO & MD [5]

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I think it's mirroring a worldwide growth of lung transplantation as such. I don't think we should pay too much attention to a single quarter. We will see in the long-term trend if that will continue. We know that more -- we're seeing more countries buy and clinics buying also in South America and so forth, but we don't really know if that will increase over the kind of long-term trend of 6% to 7%. It's too early to say.

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Daniel Albin, Danske Bank Markets Equity Research - Research Analyst [6]

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Okay, yes. And my second question then. So you're mentioning China here growing very fast, and I'm wondering if you could give us maybe some bit more clarity on the regulatory pathway required by the FDA or the MPA nowadays regarding your products and then Perfadex and also the EVLP solution. What are the lead times that required clinical studies you're obligated to do, et cetera?

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Magnus Nilsson, Xvivo Perfusion AB (publ) - CEO & MD [7]

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So normally, it's -- traditionally or historically, it takes about 2 years to get product registered in China if you have the right documentation. We already STEEN Solution. We have several of the disposables already approved in China. We have -- the things missing so far is the XPS. However, it's okay to use the XPS in -- as an exception still in -- since transplantation -- lung transplantation is very young there, they allow them to use them anyways.

But we are in the -- rather late -- should be in the rather late stage of having XPS approved. And obviously hard to say, but we -- I would imagine that within -- in the next 6 to 9 months, we should have a registration of XPS in China. We have Perfadex as before registered.

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Daniel Albin, Danske Bank Markets Equity Research - Research Analyst [8]

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Okay. And how do you view then the, I guess, the ramp-up of EVLP procedures in China?

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Magnus Nilsson, Xvivo Perfusion AB (publ) - CEO & MD [9]

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It's obviously early stage. But again, we see how quickly it grows. What they have problems with in China is that they are not used to good ways of taking care of the donor. So the donor management is rather, let me say, not too developed, which means that the lungs or the organs they receive vary in quality quite a bit, and that's what they have -- they said that to us that for that reason, they think EVLP is very important for them in order to check if the organs are okay since again, the variation, I should say, of the organ quality is pretty large. So they believe that EVLP will be an important addition to their clinical practice, although we have to say that this is, again, transplantation -- lung transplantation is very new, and obviously, this technology is for them, totally new.

On the other hand, I have experienced from other product -- taking out the products to China, and they always want to start with the most advanced. They never go for the simple solution. So from my time in Vitrolife, I know that once the Chinese start up, they want to go for the cutting-edge technology, and I think that's why they have been so interested in taking on this EVLP. But we will probably have to wait a little bit longer probably -- maybe a year or so until we see a significant increase in EVLPs there. But I have no doubt that China will be a very important market for us just in the next 2 to 3 years.

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Operator [10]

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(Operator Instructions) Our next question comes from the line of Arvid Necander from Redeye.

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Arvid Necander, Redeye AB, Research Division - Analyst [11]

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Okay. So my first question relates to the collaboration with United Therapeutics. So when we saw the delivery of the first machine, we saw quite a big uptick in the sales growth related to warm perfusion. How correlated was this? And do you expect to see a similar impact now that the second machine is delivered?

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Magnus Nilsson, Xvivo Perfusion AB (publ) - CEO & MD [12]

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Yes. It's a tough question because I try to predict what other people do, but we know that they're very dedicated in providing this service to the U.S. clinics. They are very dedicated. They put a lot of money into having the service in order to have more transplant available. I know their CEO is very -- is very dedicated in advancing this technology in order to get more patients, transplantation -- transplanted.

So I can only judge from what I see in terms of how many -- how much resources they put in. And what kind of big focus they have. So I'm convinced that over the years, they will increase significantly the number of -- or percentage of EVLPs done by their service compared to the overall number. And for us, it's very good because I think that a lot of clinics are not big enough to -- can employ this technology by themselves, and that I foresee more or less that in the next year or so, we will see a pretty rapid increase in this service. I would be surprised otherwise.

We have already been starting co-marketing with them, helping or going traveling with them to clinics and to explain the difference and the similarities for the clinics using this service versus using our technology. So I can just say that they're very determined and put a lot of resources into it, which I think is very encouraging.

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Arvid Necander, Redeye AB, Research Division - Analyst [13]

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Okay. And also, if you could just address the recruitments you've made a bit more. How do you see the headcount increasing going forward? Are we -- should we expect to see the same trend? Or do you see a bit of a slowdown now going forward?

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Magnus Nilsson, Xvivo Perfusion AB (publ) - CEO & MD [14]

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Yes. So what we've done -- we can say that we have kind of a pretty steady growth when it comes to marketing. It's no explosion there. It's an add-on every now and then when we -- in more or less parallel with the sales increase. What we've done is to built our development team. So to run these huge clinical trials for us, several -- I mean, heart will be on all continents. We had to build more competence and teams in the heart transplantation field and also, to some extent, on the PrimECC thing.

So this will continue for some quarters more to complete the buildup of those clinical teams. After that, I foresee that we go back to a more gradual increase again. So maybe a couple of quarters where we complete the kind of recruitment of these clinical teams. After that, I see more -- going back to a more gradual growth in terms -- in parallel, more or less how we place up new machines and so forth.

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Arvid Necander, Redeye AB, Research Division - Analyst [15]

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Okay. Yes, right. And then just a last question. I guess I popped out related to the subject that you talked about before. Related to China, how do you see the reimbursement path? Of course, very hard to speculate, but what's your sense? And if you have any take on that going forward?

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The rest is here:
Edited Transcript of XVIVO.ST earnings conference call or presentation 24-Oct-19 12:00pm GMT - Yahoo Finance

June 23, 2017 Researchers at the University of Texas at Dallas have developed a wearable diagnostic biosensor that can detect three interconnected, diabetes-related compounds -- cortisol, glucose and interleukin-6 -- in perspired sweat for up to a week without loss of signal integrity. The team envisions that their wearable devices will contain a small transceiver to send data to an application installed on a cellphone. Credit: University of Texas at Dallas

Researchers at The University of Texas at Dallas are getting more out of the sweat they've put into their work on a wearable diagnostic tool that measures three diabetes-related compounds in microscopic amounts of perspiration.

"Type 2 diabetes affects so many people. If you have to manage and regulate this chronic problem, these markers are the levers that will help you do that," said Dr. Shalini Prasad, professor of bioengineering in the Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science. "We believe we've created the first diagnostic wearable that can monitor these compounds for up to a week, which goes beyond the type of single use monitors that are on the market today."

In a study published recently in Scientific Reports, Prasad and lead author Dr. Rujute Munje, a recent bioengineering PhD graduate, describe their wearable diagnostic biosensor that can detect three interconnected compounds - cortisol, glucose and interleukin-6 - in perspired sweat for up to a week without loss of signal integrity.

"If a person has chronic stress, their cortisol levels increase, and their resulting insulin resistance will gradually drive their glucose levels out of the normal range," said Prasad, Cecil H. and Ida Green Professor in Systems Biology Science. "At that point, one could become pre-diabetic, which can progress to type 2 diabetes, and so on. If that happens, your body is under a state of inflammation, and this inflammatory marker, interleukin-6, will indicate that your organs are starting to be affected."

Last October, Prasad and her research team confirmed they could measure glucose and cortisol in sweat. Several significant advances since then have allowed them to create a more practical, versatile tool.

"We wanted to make a product more useful than something disposable after a single use," Prasad said. "It also has to require only your ambient sweat, not a huge amount. And it's not enough to detect just one thing. Measuring multiple molecules in a combinatorial manner and tracking them over time allows us to tell a story about your health."

One factor that facilitated their device's progress was the use of room temperature ionic liquid (RTIL), a gel that serves to stabilize the microenvironment at the skin-cell surface so that a week's worth of hourly readings can be taken without the performance degrading over time.

"This greatly influences the cost model for the deviceyou're buying four monitors per month instead of 30; you're looking at a year's supply of only about 50," Prasad said. "The RTIL also allows the detector to interface well with different skin typesthe texture and quality of pediatric skin versus geriatric skin have created difficulties in prior models. The RTIL's ionic characteristics make it somewhat like applying moisturizer to skin."

Prasad's team also determined that their biomarker measurements are reliable with a tiny amount of sweatjust 1 to 3 microliters, much less than the 25 to 50 previously believed necessary.

"We actually spent three years producing that evidence," Prasad said. "At those low volumes, the biomolecules expressed are meaningful. We can do these three measurements in a continuous manner with that little sweat."

Prasad envisions that her wearable devices will contain a small transceiver to send data to an application installed on a cellphone.

"With the app we're creating, you'll simply push a button to request information from the device," Prasad said. "If you measure levels every hour on the hour for a full week, that provides 168 hours' worth of data on your health as it changes."

That frequency of measurement could produce an unprecedented picture of how the body responds to dietary decisions, lifestyle activities and treatment.

"People can take more control and improve their own self-care," Prasad said. "A user could learn which unhealthy decisions are more forgiven by their body than others."

Prasad has emphasized "frugal innovation" throughout the development process, making sure the end product is accessible for as many people as possible.

"We've designed this product so that it can be manufactured using standard coating techniques. We made sure we used processes that will allow for mass production without adding cost," Prasad said. "Our cost of manufacturing will be comparable to what it currently takes to make single-use glucose test stripsas little as 10 to 15 cents. It needs to reach people beyond America and Europeand even within first-world nations, we see the link between diabetes and wealth. It can't simply be a small percentage of people who can afford this."

Prasad was motivated to address this specific problem in part by her own story.

"South Asians, like myself, are typically prone to diabetes and to cardiovascular disease," Prasad said. "If I can monitor on a day-to-day basis how my body is responding to intake, and as I age, if I can adjust my lifestyle to keep those readings where they need to be, then I can delay getting a disease, if not prevent it entirely."

For Prasad, the latest work is a fulfilling leap forward in what has already been a five-year process.

"We've been solving this problem since 2012, in three phases," Prasad said. "The initial concept for a system level integration of these sensors was done in collaboration with EnLiSense LLC, a startup focused on enabling lifestyle based sensors and devices. In the market, there's nothing that is a slap-on wearable that uses perspired sweat for diagnostics. And I think we are the closest. If we find the right partner, then within a 12-month window, we hope to license our technology and have our first products in the market."

Explore further: Bioengineers create sweat-based sensor to monitor glucose

More information: Rujuta D. Munje et al, A new paradigm in sweat based wearable diagnostics biosensors using Room Temperature Ionic Liquids (RTILs), Scientific Reports (2017). DOI: 10.1038/s41598-017-02133-0

Like driving a car despite a glowing check-engine light, large buildings often chug along without maintenance being performed on the building controls designed to keep them running smoothly.

Google said Friday it would stop scanning the contents of Gmail users' inboxes for ad targeting, moving to end a practice that has fueled privacy concerns since the free email service was launched.

Researchers at The University of Texas at Dallas are getting more out of the sweat they've put into their work on a wearable diagnostic tool that measures three diabetes-related compounds in microscopic amounts of perspiration.

Microphones, from those in smartphones to hearing aids, are built specifically to hear the human voicehumans can't hear at levels higher than 20 kHz, and microphones max out at around 24 kHz, meaning that microphones only ...

Researchers at the College of Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University have developed a novel design approach for exoskeletons and prosthetic limbs that incorporates direct feedback from the human body. The findings were ...

In a proof-of-concept study, North Carolina State University engineers have designed a flexible thermoelectric energy harvester that has the potential to rival the effectiveness of existing power wearable electronic devices ...

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Bioengineers create more durable, versatile wearable for diabetes ... - Phys.Org

PR Newswire

Knight Cancer Institute nabs San Diego tech star Portland Business Journal Oregon Health & Science University's Knight Cancer Institute is adding a technology expert to its growing team. Mike Heller, a specialist in bioengineering coming from the University of California, San Diego, will head technology efforts for the ... Technology expert joins the OHSU Knight Cancer Institute's center for cancer early detectionPR Newswire (press release) all 3 news articles »

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Knight Cancer Institute nabs San Diego tech star - Portland Business Journal

Modeling the walk

Kidziski works in the lab of Scott Delp, a professor of bioengineering and of mechanical engineering who has spent decades studying the mechanics of the human body. As part of that work, Delp and his collaborators have collected data on the movements and muscle activity of hundreds of individuals as they walk and run.

With data like that, Delp, Kidziski and their team can build accurate models of how individual muscles and limbs move in response to signals from the brain.

But what they could not do was predict how people relearn to walk after surgery because, as it turns out, no one is quite sure how the brain controls complex processes like walking, let alone walking through the obstacle course of daily life or relearning how to walk after surgery.

Whereas weve gotten quite good at building computational models of muscles and joints and bones and how the whole system is connected how the human machine is built an open challenge is how your brain orchestrates and controls this complex dynamic system, Delp said.

Machine learning, a variety of artificial intelligence, has reached a point where it could be a useful tool for modeling of the brains movement control systems, Delp said, but for the most part its practitioners have been interested in self-driving cars, playing complex games like chess or serving up more effective online ads.

The time was right for a challenge like this, Delp said, in part because some in the machine learning community are looking for more meaningful problems to work on, and because bioengineers stand to gain from understanding more about machine learning. His labs most successful efforts to model human movement have come from efforts to represent neural control of movement, Delp said, and machine learning is likely a realistic way to think about learning to walk.

So far, 63 teams have submitted a total of 145 ideas to Kidziskis competition, which is one of five similar contests created for the 2017 Neural Information Processing Systems conference. Kidziski supplies each team with computer models of the human body and the world that body must navigate, including stairs, slippery surfaces and more. In addition to external challenges, teams also face internal ones, such as weak or unreliable muscles. Each team is judged based on how far its simulated human makes it through those obstacles in a fixed amount of time.

Kidziski and Delp hope that more teams will join their competition, and with about two months remaining, they hope that at least a few teams will overcome all the various virtual obstacles thrown in their way. (No one has done so yet the top teams have for the most part conquered walking, but none has attempted the more athletic maneuvers.) The challenge, Kidziski said, is very computationally expensive.

In the long run, Kidziski said he hopes the work may benefit more than just kids with cerebral palsy. For example, it may help others design better-calibrated devices to assist with walking or carrying loads, and similar ideas could be used to find better baseball pitches or sprinting techniques.

But, Kidziski said, he and his collaborators have already created something important: a new way of solving problems in biomechanics that looks to virtual crowds for solutions.

Delp is the James H. Clark Professor in the School of Engineering and a member of Stanford Bio-X and the Stanford Neurosciences Institute. Graduate student Carmichael Ong, postdoctoral fellow Jason Fries, Mobilize Center Director of Data Science Jennifer Hicks and Mohanty Sharada coordinated the project. Sergey Levine, Marcel Salath and Delp serve as advisors

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Virtual competitors vie for a different kind of athletic title | Stanford ... - Stanford University News

In a bid to fight against the deadly coronavirus pandemic, the DRDO (Defence Research and Development Organisation), using its scientific endeavour, has developed a host of protective equipment, ventilators and sanitisation equipment for helping the frontline workers.

The DRDO has developed 11 such products to combat the coronavirus. These products include visor-based full-face shield, isolation shelter, mobile area sanitisation system, advanced N99 masks, personal sanitisation equipment, portable backpack area sanitisation equipment, advanced PPEs (Personal Protection Equipment) for doctors and frontline health workers, ventilators and sanitisers.

With an anticipation of a growing need for ventilators in the coming days for patients fighting the coronavirus, the DRDOs Defence Bioengineering and Electromedical Laboratory in Bangalore, in partnership with Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL) and Scanray Pvt Ltd in Mysuru, will develop modern and portable ventilators at the earliest.

And, according to sources in the DRDO, works on the development of such ventilators are progressing and each scientist and technician is working to come up with the best and most advanced form of ventilator. Apart from this, a personal sanitisation equipment which is a full body disinfection chamber has been developed by the DRDOs Vehicle Research and Development Establishment laboratory in Ahmednagar. This personal sanitisation equipment, which is currently being used at the entrance of many markets across the country, is a walk-through full body disinfection chamber. It is a portable system equipped with sanitiser and soap dispenser.

The decontamination is started using a foot pedal at the entry. On entering the chamber, an electrically operated pump creates a disinfectant mist of hypo sodium chloride for disinfecting. The mist spray is calibrated for an operation of 25 seconds and stops automatically, indicating completion of operation.

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DRDO at the forefront of fighting Covid-19 - - Defence Aviation Post

Science and Engineering Research Board (SERB), a statutory body of the Department of Science and Technology (DST), is supporting technology by the Department of Biosciences and Bioengineering (DBB), IIT Bombay for capturing and inactivation of a novel coronavirus, the causative agent of COVID-19.

The funding will help the team from the Department of Biosciences and Bioengineering, IIT Bombay develop a gel that can be applied to the nasal passage, which is a major entry point of the coronavirus. This solution is not only expected to protect the safety of health workers but can also lead to a reduction in community transmission of COVID-19, thereby helping disease management.

Given the contagious nature of COVID-19, health providers including doctors and nurses are at maximum risk while taking care of COVID-19 patients, particularly asymptomatic ones who cannot be detected and pose a greater risk in spreading the disease.

The team is planning a 2-pronged approach to limit transmission of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, the causative agent of COVID-19. Primarily, since viruses replicate within host cells of the lungs, the first component of the strategy will be to inhibit the binding of viruses to host cells. While this is expected to reduce host cell infection, viruses will still remain active, therefore, raising the need to inactivate them.

Secondly, biological molecules would be incorporated, which would inactivate the trapped viruses in a manner similar to that of detergents. Upon completion, this approach will lead to the development of gels that can be locally applied in the nasal cavity.

Prof Ashutosh Sharma, Secretary, DST said, "Our health care workers and others working in the front-line of fight against the virus deserve a fool-proof, 200% protection. The nasal gel being developed in conjunction with other protective measures will provide a strong extra layer of defense",

Prof. Kiran Kondabagil, Prof. Rinti Banerjee, Prof. Ashutosh Kumar and Prof. Shamik Sen from the Dept. of Biosciences & Bioengineering at IIT Bombay will be part of this project. The team has expertise in the areas encompassing virology, structural biology, biophysics, biomaterials, and drug delivery and it is expected that the technology would be ready in about 9 months.

(With Inputs from PIB)

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DST supporting technology for capturing and inactivation of coronavirus - Devdiscourse