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

Thirty years ago, when the field of tissue engineering beginning to coalesce, experts predicted we were just a couple decades away from creating brand-new organs for patients. After all, replacement parts made of plastic or metal had become a realityjust ask the millions of people living with knee or hip replacements.

So, why arent we, in 2020, growing replacement lungs, livers and kidneys to fill the gap that donor organs cant address?

People asked that question back when tissue engineering was being defined in the 90s, said Jordan Miller, Ph.D., an assistant professor of bioengineering at Rice University. They said: Weve got a scaffold, weve got cells and weve got growth factorsso, give me a liver, then.

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Growing new organs turned out to be a little further off than anyone thought, chiefly because weve learned a lot that we didnt know we didnt know, said Miller. But, thanks to advances in technology, he believes the field is in striking distance this decade.

There are thousands of labs working to make better cells that could eventually work the way natural organs do. But figuring out the best medium to grow cells in or the best recipe of nutrients to feed them are just pieces of the puzzle. Those cells need to be organized in the right way for them to work properly.

You can grow billions of cells in a lab. You can grow hundreds of billions of cells, all flat at the bottom of a petri dish, Miller said. But put them in 3D, in a scaffold with factors, they will die if theyre any bigger than about half a millimeter.

Whats missing, Miller says, is architecture: If you dont have it, you cant get nutrients to cells and cells will die.

RELATED:3D printing lungs using blue light, hydrogel and 'yellow dye #5'

And thats where Volumetric, the startup Miller co-founded with Bagrat Grigoryan, Ph.D., comes in. While others work to solve the cell-sourcing question, as Miller puts it, Volumetric is focused on the architecture those cells will be put into to become tissues, and then organs. It started out with $150,000 in seed funding from Y Combinator and stands to reel in more after pitching its work to investors at the accelerator's Demo Day this week.

He likens building an organ to building a city. The same way cities need roadways to deliver food and remove waste, organs need blood vessels. And, depending on what they do, different organs have additional roadways: The lungs move air through their airways and the kidneys move urine through the urinary tree. Volumetric is using 3D bioprinting to create road maps for these organs.

Instead of 3D-printing hard plastics or metals, Volumetric is using water-based materials to make parts that are biocompatible with the body, mimicking the water content and stiffness of human organs.

What we have been able to do is make the first vascular unit cell for lung tissue in a material that is mostly water, Miller said. He means the smallest building block that, by itself, has organ-level function. In the lung, thats the air sac. In a paper published in Science last May, Volumetric described a hydrogel with the roadways for an air sac and surrounding blood vessel network. It has worked with a small model of the liver lobule and is looking into pancreatic islets and kidney glomeruli.

Theres still some work between these unit cells and a functioning organ. For starters, Volumetric needs to scale up its single air sac to 600 million air sacs to reproduce the function of a lung. And, down the road, it will need to find the cells to put into its architecture to make these new organs.

The beauty of doing architecture is we can give those architectures out to labs all around the world to do studies with. That way, the scientific community together can find the solution, Miller said. Its not only less money we need to raise, but its better because we can try more things.

RELATED:Researchers build 3D-printed heart out of patient's donor cells

And those labs arent the only avenue for collaboration: Volumetrics technology could help companies improve the drug development process. Instead of testing their prospects in animal models that may not translate to humans, they could test them in engineered tissues and organs.

Were talking with pharma companies right now to identify their needs for 3D human-like architecture and their drug development pipeline. That is a very important problem because a lot of drugs fail at the phase 3 clinical trial. If you cant get efficacy at that level, you cant go to market, Miller said.

Research applications aside, he figures the first therapeutic use of Volumetrics technology may be in bridging treatments, which keep patients with failing organs alive long enough to receive a donor organ.

An analogy we like is the left ventricular assist device (LVAD) for someone who needs a heart transplant but is not able to get one because supply is low. Sometimes, it may be appropriate to give them an LVAD, Miller said. Its not a heart replacement, but its a heart assist device that buys them more time.

Ultimately, though, Volumetric exists so that organ donation will become a thing of the past. A potential benefit of its technology would be to grow organs for patients using their own cells, resulting in a perfect match and eliminating the need for lifelong immunosuppressive therapy. And creating bespoke organs would solve multiple problems stemming from the shortage of donor organs.

There are very difficult ethical issues that have to be wrestled with, with a limited supply, Miller said.

You have to be quite sick to be on the organ donation waitlist, he said. But there is a whole class of conditions that would preclude someone from being on that listpeople with cancer, for example, or those with alcohol-related liver damage who dont meet certain criteria for a transplant.

The duo sees their work as the logical next step in the evolution of therapies for human disease. Treatments have evolved from small molecules to biologics, antibodies and cell therapies.

At Volumetric, we are working on the next stages after that: tissue-level, then organ-level therapies The potential is to make replacement organs for a patient from their own stem cells and in a way that the organ would be so compatible with their body that it would eventually become a part of their body and not have to be replaced, Miller said.

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Exclusive: How far are we from lab-grown organs? This Y Combinator startup is printing a road map - FierceBiotech

A new study published in the journal Current Biology by the researchers at the University of California San Diego discovers that high blood levels of RNA delivered by the PHGDH gene could fill in as a biomarker for early recognition of Alzheimers disease. The work could prompt the advancement of a blood test to distinguish people who will build up the disease years before the side effects shown by them.

The proteins and RNA that are produced by the PHGDH gene are basic for mental health and functions in newborn children, kids and teenagers. As individuals get older, the gene ordinarily inclines down its creation of these proteins and RNAs.

Study in detail here.

The lead author of the study is a professor of bioengineering at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering in collaboration, Sheng Zhong proposes that the PHGDH gene causes the overproduction of a kind of RNA, called extracellular RNA (exRNA) that could give an early admonition indication of Alzheimers ailment in older people.

Read more-New Research Shows Air Pollution Is One of the Top Causes of Death Worldwide

Sheng Zhong tells that A few realized changes related with Alzheimers ailment for the most part appear around the hour of clinical finding, which is excessively late. Researchers suspected that there is an molecular predictor that would show up a long time previously, and that is the thing that persuaded this investigation

This discovery is just made due to a technique created by Zhong and colleagues that is sufficiently enough to succession countless exRNAs in under one drop of blood. The strategy, named SILVER-SEQ, was utilized to examine the exRNA profiles in blood tests of more than thirty old people 70 years and those who were checked as long as 15 years before death.

The outcomes indicated a precarious increment in PHGDH exRNA creation in all converters roughly two years before they were clinically determined to have Alzheimers. PHGDH exRNA levels were on normal higher in Alzheimers patients. An expanding pattern wasnt shown in the controls, aside from in one control that got named a converter.

Zhong further tells that the scientists noted some vulnerability in regards to the irregular converter. Since the subject died at some point during the 15-year checking, it is indistinct whether that individual would have undoubtedly built up Alzheimers if the person lived longer.

The co-first author, Zixu Zhou who is a bioengineering alumnus from Zhongs lab, explains that this is a review study dependent on clinical subsequent meet-ups from the past, not a randomized clinical preliminary on a bigger sample size. So researchers are not yet calling this a checked blood test for Alzheimers disease.

In this study, the data from clinically gathered samples strongly bolster the revelation of a biomarker for anticipating the development of Alzheimers disease. In addition to randomized preliminaries, future examinations will incorporate testing if the PHGDH biomarker can be utilized to recognize patients who will react to drugs for Alzheimers ailment.

Read more-The New Study Finds that Psychiatric disorders Cause Pregnancy Issues

The team is also open to collaborating with Alzheimers research groups that might be interested in testing and validating this biomarker.

The studys team is also working together with Alzheimers research group that may be keen on testing and approving this biomarker.

Koo tells that if the outcomes of this study can be recreated by different centres and extended to more cases, at that point it recommends that there are biomarkers outside of the brain that are modified before clinical disease onset and that these progressions additionally foresee the conceivable onset or development of Alzheimers malady.

If this PDGDH signal is demonstrated to be precise, it tends to be very educational for diagnosis and treatment response for Alzheimers examination.

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The New Study finds a New Biomarker in Blood for Early Detection of Alzheimer's disease - TheHealthMania

William Grover, an associate professor of bioengineering at the University of California, is spreading some seriously magical vibes to all the educators who have to teach their courses from home for the foreseeable future. In an insanely wholesome tweet, he shared that teachers can choose their own backgrounds using the video conferencing site Zoom. And his pick? Hogwarts, of course.

"A [pro tip] for my fellow professors plunging into online education: Zoom lets you select a 'virtual background,'" he wrote. "I'm looking forward to lecturing at Hogwarts this Spring." During times like these, it's important to appreciate the little things that get you through the day, and this discovery certainly falls into that category.

And parents, if you're finding yourself having to temporarily educate your kids at home, check out these free resources and educational shows for inspiration.

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This Professor Is Very Excited to Teach in Front of a Hogwarts Backdrop For a Few Weeks - POPSUGAR

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. Novel biomedical advances that show promise in the lab often fall short in clinical trials. For researchers studying peripheral artery disease, this is made more difficult by a lack of standardized metrics for what recovery looks like. A new study from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign researchers identifies major landmarks of PAD recovery, creating signposts for researchers seeking to understand the disease and develop treatments.

Having these landmarks could aid in more optimal approaches to treatment, identifying what kind of treatment could work best for an individual patient and when it would be most effective, said Illinois bioengineering professor Wawrzyniec L. Dobrucki, who led the study. He also is affiliated with the Carle Illinois College of Medicine.

PAD is a narrowing of the arteries in the limbs, most commonly the legs, so they dont receive enough blood flow. It often isnt diagnosed until walking becomes painful, when the disease is already fairly advanced. Diabetes, obesity, smoking and age increase the risk for PAD and can mask the symptoms, making PAD difficult to diagnose. Once diagnosed, there is no standard treatment, and doctors may struggle to find the right approach for a patient or to tell whether a patient is improving, Dobrucki said.

The researchers used multiple imaging methods to create a holistic picture of the changes in muscle tissue, blood vessels and gene expression through four stages of recovery after mice had the arteries in their legs surgically narrowed to mimic the narrowing found in PAD patients. They published their results in the journal Theranostics.

There are a lot of people who study PAD, so there are all these potential new therapies, but we dont see them in the clinics, said postdoctoral researcher Jamila Hedhli, the first author of the paper. So the main goal of this paper is utilizing these landmarks to standardize our practice as researchers. How can we see if the benefit of certain therapies is really comparable if we are not measuring the same thing?

The cross-disiplinary collaboration identified landmarks over four stages of disease recovery. Pictured, from left: senior research scientist Iwona Dobrucka, professor Jefferson Chan, postdoctoral researcher Jamila Hedhli, graduate student Hailey Knox, professor Wawrzyniec Dobrucki, professor Michael Insana, adjunct John Cole.

Photo by Fred Zwicky

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Dobruckis group collaborated with bioengineering professor Michael Insana, chemistry professor Jefferson Chan and senior research scientist Iwona Dobrucka, the director of the Molecular Imaging Laboratory in the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, to monitor the mice with a suite of imaging technologies that could be found in hospitals or clinics, including ultrasound, laser speckle contrast, photoacoustics, PET and more. Each method documented a different aspect of the mouses response to the artery narrowing anatomy, metabolism, muscle function, the formation of new blood vessels, oxygen perfusion and genetic activity.

By serially imaging the mice over time, the researchers identified key features and events over four phases of recovery.

Each imaging method gives us a different aspect of the recovery of PAD that the other tools will not. So instead of looking at only one thing, now were looking at a whole spectrum of the recovery, Hedhli said. By looking at these landmarks, were allowing scientists to use them as a tool to say At this point, I should see this happening, and if we add this kind of therapy, there should be an enhancement in recovery.

Though mice are an imperfect model for human PAD, each of the imaging platforms the researchers used can translate to human PAD patients, as well as to other diseases, Dobrucki said. Next, the researchers plan to map the landmarks of PAD in larger animals often used in preclinical studies, such as pigs, and ultimately in human patients.

We are very interested in improving diagnosis and treatment, Hedhli said. Many people are working to develop early diagnosis and treatment options for patients. Having standard landmarks for researchers to refer to can facilitate all of these findings, move them forward to clinic and, we hope, result in successful clinical trials.

The National Institutes of Health, the American Heart Association, and the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of Poland supported this work. Chan, Dobrucki, Hedhli and Insana also are affiliated with the Beckman Institute. Hedhli was supported by a Beckman-Brown Postdoctoral Fellowship.

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Study maps landmarks of peripheral artery disease to guide treatment development - University of Illinois News

Japanese app to seek advise on Coronavirus

Since the beginning of the coronavirus outbreak, several theories had pointed towards the fact that the novel coronavirus strain - COVID 19, which has now become a global epidemic was a bioengineered weapon that had escaped from a lab in Wuhan.

If evidence is to be believed this man-made plague may unwittingly have been unleashed on the population of China by its own government.

Last Friday, Chinese supreme leader Xi Jinping called an emergency meeting following which the country's leadership has issued directives to all the bioengineering labs in the country including those in Wuhan to adhere to strict protocols.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping though never accepted that the coronavirus was manufactured in its lab in Wuhan said that a system should be set up to prevent similar epidemics in the future.

Jinping ordered that a national system to control biosecurity risks must be put in place "to protect the people's health."

Soon after this, the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology released a directive that laid out "Instructions on strengthening biosecurity management in microbiology labs that handle advanced viruses like the novel coronavirus."

Experts are of the opinion that this definitely is proof that China unleashed the coronavirus plague that has killed thousands in China and is threatening to become a global epidemic.

Steven W. Mosher, President of the Population Research Institute wrote in NYPost the directive issued by the government to the labs is suggestive of its guilty, especially as there is only one lab capable of handling "advanced viruses like the novel coronavirus" and this one is located in Wuhan.

"It turns out that in all of China there is only one. And this one is located in the Chinese city of Wuhan that just happens to be ... the epicenter of the epidemic. That's right. China's only Level 4 microbiology lab that is equipped to handle deadly coronaviruses, called the National Biosafety Laboratory, is part of the Wuhan Institute of Virology," he wrote.

If the directive wasn't proof enough, now it has emerged that the People's Liberation Army's top biological warfare expert, Major General Chen Wei has been deputed to Wuhan at the end of January to help with the effort to contain the outbreak.

Major General Chen has been researching coronaviruses since the SARS outbreak of 2003 and it is understood that it is now her job to contain the spread of the virus.

And she will be working out of the bioengineering lab at Wuhan to find out ways to contain the spread - the same lab from where the COVID 19 is suspected to have escaped.

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Wuhan virus: China may have just accepted that the 'man-made' coronavirus escaped its biowarfare lab - International Business Times, Singapore Edition

In the inevitable shift away from fossil fuels, Genomatica announced the first commercial production ... [+] of bio-based nylon. Companies that seize the economic and environmental advantages of biomanufacturing stand to lead the way, whether its fabrics or face creams.

In the inevitable shift away from fossil fuels, Genomatica announced the first commercial production of bio-based nylon. Companies that seize the economic and environmental benefits of biomanufacturing stand to lead the way, whether its fabrics or face creams.

When we think of biotechnology, its easy to think just about pharmaceuticals. Even the broader term bioeconomy may only bring to mind things like agriculture, forestry, and food.

But the bioeconomy is best thought of as turning biomass into business, plants into products. What we call the bioeconomy today made up most of our economy before the 20th century, when petrochemistry and synthetic chemistry gave rise to a revolutionary material that became ubiquitous worldwide: plastics.

In the 21st century, consumers are increasingly demanding products that reflect their more sustainable values and lifestyles. Chemistry is giving way to synthetic biology, and engineered organismsusing the same kind of fermentation we use to make wine, bread, or kombuchacan now make the chemical building blocks for shoes, cars, and carpets.

There is just one question: Which producers will have the foresight to lead this biomanufacturing revolution?

Recently, a bioengineering company called Genomatica reached a milestone that epitomizes this shift from fossil fuels to biology. Genomaticaannouncedit had made a ton of the chemical building block that industry relies on to make nylon-6using a renewable fermentation approach.Heres why that matters.

First, its an economic opportunity. The nylon industry is worth $10 billion globally. Thats a huge potential market to tap into. Nylon became famous in the 1940s as a textile fiber in stockings. Today, it is found in everything from clothes to packaging.

Second, its an environmental necessity. As with most plastic production today, nylon-6 usually starts with crude oil. In this case, the molecule caprolactam is refined from crude oil and made into nylon. Every year, the world makes five million tons of nylon-6, which results in an estimated 60 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions. Producing nylon creates nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas that is 300 times more potent than carbon dioxide. Manufacturing nylon also requires large amounts of water and energy, further contributing to environmental degradation and global warming.

Using a synthetic biology approach, Genomatica engineered microorganisms to ferment plant sugars to produce caprolactam, and therefore nylon, in a 100% renewable way. Christopher Schilling, CEO of Genomatica, thinks this is good for business and our planet.

Theres this idea that in order to be sustainable, youve got to find some totally novel material, said Schilling. But by producing the very same chemical precursor that industry would normally get from fossil fuels, he believes Genomatica can have a much bigger, more rapid impact on sustainability. As this product continues to scale, and the economics become more obvious, companies will begin to ask themselves: why would we source it any other way?

Genomatica wants to deliver sustainable nylon to brands like H&M, Vaude, and Carvico via its partnership with Aquafil, one of the largest producers of nylon in the world. Aquafils ECONYL brand of nylon takes old fishing nets, textile scraps, and other forms of nylon waste and transforms them into new yarn thats as good as virgin raw material. Aquafil sees this regeneration process as a new opportunity for the fashion and furniture industries, and a way to protect the environment.

It was important to us to establish a real connection point with consumer brands, said Schilling. As a technology innovator, Genomatica felt that the success of the product depended on being accepted at all points in the value chain. Aquafil was the best partner for that, where we could share a great story that consumer brands could latch on to and ultimately champion.

Schilling says that the initial one-ton production of the chemical precursor is a small but important step, and its next goal is to reach commercial-scale levels of 30,000-100,000 tons per year.

One of the things thats really differentiated Genomatica is our ability to scale, to know how to take something all the way from ideation to commercial realization, says Schilling.

Nylon is Genomaticas third big synthetic biology product to come to market, and its previous experience in this space is sure to help accelerate the transition from the lab bench to the marketplace.

Since 2016, Italian bioplastics company Novamont has been producing the bio-BDO at a rate of 30,000 ... [+] tons per year.

Genomaticas first big success was with 1,4-butanediol, known more colloquially as BDO. This chemical is used to make plastics, elastic fibers, and polyurethanes, and its found in everything from plastic bags to spandex. The world produces about 2.5 million metric tons of BDO every year, and at about US$2,000 per ton, the market is in the billions.

In 2012, Genomatica delivered a chemical engineering breakthrough by producing bio-based BDO with a cost-competitive fermentation process at a commercial scale. Bio-BDO is 100% bio-based and biodegradable, and can be found in athletic apparel, running shoes, electronics, and automotive applications.

A second big success came with a chemical named 1,3-butylene glycol. Few realize it, but many of our everyday personal care and beauty products are derived from crude oil. In early 2019, Genomatica announced the first commercial production of Brontideits brand name of the chemicalmade with natural plant-based sugars. As more and more of us strive to choose products that are in line with our personal values, those made with Brontide rather than fossil fuel derivatives offer consumers a choice that is kinder to the environment.

Taken together, there are now bio-based alternatives for the chemicals used to make everything from fuels to electronics, from shoes to cosmetics. Its a reminder of just how dependent we are on petrochemicals in our everyday lives.

On the performance side, our first goal is to make sure that the material delivers exactly the same performance features as you would get from conventionally or petroleum sourced nylon. Thats the same thing we did in BDO and butylene glycol, explains Schilling. He adds, When you have these large existing markets, you have to make sure you hit the spec to deliver the same quality.

Bio-based alternatives can offer another advantage over their fossil-based cousins: in some cases, they perform better. With butylene glycol, for example, heavy metals are a catalyst used in processing the ingredient from crude oil. In the final product, trace amounts of heavy metals remain. But with biomanufacturing, no catalysts are needed and theres no chemical processing, says Schilling. There are also different purity levels that were able to hit very effectively, he says.

The argument for sustainable, bio-based approaches to material precursors is a strong one. Through relatively simple fermentation processes, biology has shown time and again that it can make whatever we can pump out of the ground, offering precision, renewable production of key compounds. Bio-based caprolactam is another proof point.

The sticking point, as ever, is industry adoption. Industry leaders across the value chain need to seek out and support the scaling of sustainable and renewable bio-based components to speed their integration into a diverse array of end-products. Consumers want them, manufacturers can use them, and most importantly, the planet needs them.

Follow me on twitter at @johncumbers and @synbiobeta. Subscribe to my weekly newsletters in synthetic biology and space settlement.

Thank you to David Kirk and Kevin Costa for additional research and reporting in this article. Im the founder of SynBioBeta, and some of the companies that I write about are sponsors of the SynBioBeta conference and weekly digest heres the full list of SynBioBeta sponsors.

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Bio-Nylon Is The New Green: How One Company Is Fermenting A $10 Billion Market - Forbes

Sisters of the Vast Black follows nuns traveling aboard a living spaceship that can mate and produce baby spaceships. Yes, you read that correctly. Lina Rathers debut novella follows a crew of sisters from the Order of Saint Rita as they journey through space, responding to calls for help from newly established colonies. The cast of characters includes the enigmatic Reverend Mother, whose vow of silence keeps her mysterious past shrouded, the pragmatic Sister Faustina, the pious Sister Lucia, and Sister Gemma, who pines for a life outside the Order.

Set in the future after an apocalyptic interplanetary war, Rathers novella ambitiously tackles theology, personal faith crises, centralized governance, the sentience of creatures, bioengineering, sexuality, sin, and redemptionall in 160 pages.

Due to the novellas brevity, its initially difficult to distinguish one character from another. But as each sisters history and secrets are revealed, its easier to determine how a characters past influences their actions. Pacing issues parallel the initial muddied characterizations in the beginning, and much of the world-building occurs through dialogue between characters rather than through the narrative. During the first half of the novella, we hear foreboding secondhand accounts of an Earth-based Central Governance trying to resume control of the galaxy by using the far-reaching arm of the Catholic Church. But since we dont meet anyone from the Central Governance or the Church until later, the sisters main threat appears nebulous.

Fortunately, Rather ties everything together with dazzling mastery in the novellas second half. The time she invests in the characters during quiet moments pays off as a series of plot twists and reveals propel the narrative forward at breakneck speed. Here, its the sisters themselves who carry the plot, as they grapple with living out their personal faith against the threat of another war and the tightening grip of the Church. Rather also introduces Father Giovanni and Central Governance soldiers, who are both too young and too blind to see the insidious schemes of the organizations to which theyre so devoted. By the time the antagonists gain faces, their destructive corruption seems that much more terrifying due to the secondhand rumors that preceded their appearance.

Even as Rather raises the storys stakes to concern the fate of the whole galaxy, the narrative remains intensely personal and focused on the individual sisters. The storys heart lies in the sisters community formed within the flesh walls of their spaceship and in their struggles in remaining faithful to themselves, each other, and the Church. By the hopeful and open-ended conclusion, youll be left wanting to spend more time with Rathers characters.

Sisters of the Vast Black doesnt shy away from the big themes despite its small package, and it will successfully whet the appetite of anyone looking for a fresh take on the space opera genre.

Jane Huang is a neuroscience PhD student by day and a freelance writer by night. She currently lives in Pittsburgh, PA.

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Nuns Fight Evil in Space in Sisters of the Vast Black - Paste Magazine

At the intersection of engineering, biology and chemistry, youll discover one of the fastest-growing engineering disciplines: bioengineering. Bioengineering is among the fastest-growing engineering disciplines with a high demand in the medical sector.

Bioengineers design and develop devices, systems, and techniques to improve patient diagnosis, treatment, and care. They utilize biotechnology to produce personalized drugs, to make biofuels and biopolymers, to engineer tissues to replace damaged organs, to grow human tissue for drug testing, and to create new diagnostic techniques.

UMassD's bioengineering program brings together the life sciences, medicine, and engineering to provide a solid academic foundation and a broad interdisciplinary approach to the field. You will:

Bioengineering is creating its own frontiers of development. Youll join a new generation of innovators and leaders in fields with significant and growing employment opportunities including health care, public health, biomanufacturing, and biomedical engineering. The department also offers a BS degree in bioengineering with a concentration in biomedical engineering.

Your education will prepare you to contribute to the profession in an ethical and socially responsible manner and to work effectively to further your career and to benefit society.

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Bioengineering | College of Engineering - UMass Dartmouth

Its been nearly a decade since the doors to WPIs Life Sciences and Bioengineering Center (LSBC) opened. The first building to rise at Gateway Park, an 11-acre mixed-use campus taking shape just north of downtown Worcester and a short walk from the main WPI campus, the LSBC, formally dedicated on September 17, 2007, represented something of a gamble. In building the 125,000-square-foot research facility, the university was betting that by making a $65 million investment in the life sciences (the cost of the building and the site clean-up), it would realize dividends down the road.

That bet has paid off, and then some, says Eric Overstrm, former professor of biology and biotechnology, who joined WPI in 2004 as head of that department. This building has produced a return on investment well beyond anything we anticipated at the time, he says.

The LSBC was the answer to a question that had been nagging at WPI since it acquired the Gateway Park property in 1999, jointly with the Worcester Business Development Corporation: How could that former industrial brownfield benefit the university? The idea of constructing a building to provide much-needed space for a growing a research enterprise emerged early on, but what kind of research would be represented was unclear.

Overstrm recalls a meeting where several faculty members described the facilities they envisioned for the new center, including fire labs and a drop tower for impact research. He and his fellow life sciences department heads, the late Chris Sotak in Biomedical Engineering and Jim Dittami in Chemistry and Biochemistry, huddled and decided to propose a more focused approach: move all of WPIs graduate research programs in the life sciences and bioengineering to the new building.

The idea had a practical motivation. The wet labs in the 115-year-old Salisbury Laboratories building, where the biologist and biomedical engineers worked, were poorly suited to modern research, while lab space in the newer Goddard Hall, home to chemistry, biochemistry, and chemical engineering research, was running short as the WPI faculty grew.

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How One Building Created a Cascade of Change - WPI News

Jennifer Cochran, PhD, has been appointed chair of Stanfords Department of Bioengineering, which is jointly operated by the School of Medicine and School of Engineering. Her five-year term begins Sept. 1.

This department has an amazing energy due in no small part to its faculty, students and staff, said Cochran, associate professor of bioengineering. These individuals nearly 500 of them, in all have an unwavering commitment to research, learning and service, and they exude a spirit of collegiality and collaboration that permeates our department and the broader Stanford community.

Cochrans research is interdisciplinary, integrating chemistry, engineering and biophysics. Her laboratory focuses on protein-based drug discovery for applications including oncology and regenerative medicine, and the development of new technology for high-throughput protein analysis and engineering.

In addition to being a superb scholar and educator and a proponent of deeper connections with Silicon Valleys burgeoning biotechnology activities, Jennifer is an enthusiastic, dynamic individual who will bring exciting leadership to the department and be a key contributor to the schools of Engineering and Medicine, Lloyd Minor, MD, dean of the School of Medicine, and Jennifer Widom, PhD, dean of the School of Engineering, said in a joint statement.

Cochran will succeed Norbert Pelc, ScD, professor of bioengineering, who has chaired the department since 2012. Norberts vision and leadership has brought the department to new heights, Minor and Widom said. The remarkable strength of our still relatively new Bioengineering Department reflects Norberts tireless work and deep dedication.

Cochran earned a PhD in biological chemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2001. After a postdoctoral fellowship at MIT in biological engineering, she arrived at Stanford in 2005 as an assistant professor of bioengineering. In 2012,she was promoted to associate professor.She also advises cancer biology and biophysics graduate students and serves as director of the Stanford National Institutes of Health Biotechnology Predoctoral Training Program and as co-director of the Stanford National Institute of Standards and Technology Predoctoral Training Program.

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Jennifer Cochran appointed chair of bioengineering - Stanford Medical Center Report

Rice University chemist Zachary Ball has been named director of Rices Institute of Biosciences and Bioengineering (IBB). The institute promotes interdisciplinary research and education encompassing physics, chemistry, biology and engineering.Ball succeeds Jane Grande-Allen, who will continue to serve as the Isabel C. Cameron Professor and chair of the Department of Bioengineering.

Zach is our first chemist in the role of IBB director and I am very excited about how he will expand the scope of our collaborative research, said Yousif Shamoo, Rices vice provost for research, who announced the appointment.

Ball sees his role with IBB as an opportunity to soften boundaries between departments at Rice and to help faculty connect with outside researchers in the Texas Medical Center.

There is this inherent tension at a university, Ball said. We still need a traditional department structure, but theres also a need to empower faculty in ways that are bigger and broader than traditional departments can provide. Thats a big reason why IBB is and remains a hugely important part of the Rice research ensemble. Its uniquely situated to encourage faculty collaboration.

Zach brings an objective clarity on integration, said Paul Cherukuri, IBBs executive director. He has a great analytical understanding of all the things were doing at IBB and how to integrate our activities across the disciplines.

Ball used his own recent experience at Rice as an example. Since my lab moved to the BioScience Research Collaborative, weve been near new people and its really changed how we think about some research problems, he said. I see on a small scale how bringing together people with different views can help build research that goes in new directions.

Balls Rice lab designs, builds and studies novel transition-metal complexes with unique structures and functions for applications in chemical biology and medicine, including the development of next-generation protein drugs.

Im a chemist who clearly works on biological problems, but Ive also traditionally viewed myself as on the fringes of what IBB does, he said. So I think its both a strength and a challenge that I arrive at IBB with a different perspective. Ill try to use that unique perspective while also relying on the strong network of IBB faculty to effectively enable progress in the many diverse fields that IBB encompasses.

Ball, an associate professor of chemistry, joined the Rice faculty in 2006. He earned a bachelors degree at Harvard University in 1999 and a Ph.D. at Stanford in 2004.

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Zachary Ball to Lead Institute of Biosciences and Bioengineering - Texas Medical Center (press release)

Green Planet Bioengineering Co Ltd (GPLB) shares are moving today onvolatility-68.29% or $-0.024 from the open.TheOTC listed companysaw a recent bid of $0.0111 and2500shares have traded hands in the session.

Deep diving into thetechnical levels forGreen Planet Bioengineering Co Ltd (GPLB), we note that the equitycurrently has a 14-day Commodity Channel Index (CCI) of -85.01. Active investors may choose to use this technical indicator as a stock evaluation tool. Used as a coincident indicator, the CCI reading above +100 would reflect strong price action which may signal an uptrend. On the flip side, a reading below -100 may signal a downtrend reflecting weak price action. Using the CCI as a leading indicator, technical analysts may use a +100 reading as an overbought signal and a -100 reading as an oversold indicator, suggesting a trend reversal.

Green Planet Bioengineering Co Ltds Williams Percent Range or 14 day Williams %R currently sits at -98.17. The Williams %R oscillates in a range from 0 to -100. A reading between 0 and -20 would point to an overbought situation. A reading from -80 to -100 would signal an oversold situation. The Williams %R was developed by Larry Williams. This is a momentum indicator that is the inverse of the Fast Stochastic Oscillator.

Currently, the 14-day ADX for Green Planet Bioengineering Co Ltd (GPLB) is sitting at 30.34. Generally speaking, an ADX value from 0-25 would indicate an absent or weak trend. A value of 25-50 would support a strong trend. A value of 50-75 would identify a very strong trend, and a value of 75-100 would lead to an extremely strong trend. ADX is used to gauge trend strength but not trend direction. Traders often add the Plus Directional Indicator (+DI) and Minus Directional Indicator (-DI) to identify the direction of a trend.

The RSI, or Relative Strength Index, is a widely used technical momentum indicator that compares price movement over time. The RSI was created by J. Welles Wilder who was striving to measure whether or not a stock was overbought or oversold. The RSI may be useful for spotting abnormal price activity and volatility. The RSI oscillates on a scale from 0 to 100. The normal reading of a stock will fall in the range of 30 to 70. A reading over 70 would indicate that the stock is overbought, and possibly overvalued. A reading under 30 may indicate that the stock is oversold, and possibly undervalued. After a recent check, the 14-day RSIforGreen Planet Bioengineering Co Ltd (GPLB) is currently at 45.22, the 7-day stands at 42.83, and the 3-day is sitting at 35.98.

Needle moving action has been spotted in Nation Energy Inc (NEGY) as shares are moving today onvolatility-67.30% or -0.067 from the open.TheOTC listed companysaw a recent bid of 0.0327 and1424shares have traded hands in the session.

After a recent check, Nation Energy Incs 14-day RSI is currently at 42.44, the 7-day stands at 36.43, and the 3-day is sitting at 23.85.

Taking a deeper look into the technical levels ofNation Energy Inc (NEGY), we can see thatthe Williams Percent Range or 14 day Williams %R currently sits at -98.07. The Williams %R oscillates in a range from 0 to -100. A reading between 0 and -20 would point to an overbought situation. A reading from -80 to -100 would signal an oversold situation. The Williams %R was developed by Larry Williams. This is a momentum indicator that is the inverse of the Fast Stochastic Oscillator.

Nation Energy Inc (NEGY) currently has a 14-day Commodity Channel Index (CCI) of -141.42. Active investors may choose to use this technical indicator as a stock evaluation tool. Used as a coincident indicator, the CCI reading above +100 would reflect strong price action which may signal an uptrend.

Currently, the 14-day ADX for Nation Energy Inc (NEGY) is sitting at 9.40. Generally speaking, an ADX value from 0-25 would indicate an absent or weak trend. A value of 25-50 would support a strong trend. A value of 50-75 would identify a very strong trend, and a value of 75-100 would lead to an extremely strong trend.

Investors often closely follow fundamental and technical data. Even with all the evidence, it can be tough to determine if the economy and the markets are preparing for a whole new breakout run. With the recent trend resulting in a series of new all-time record highs, investors will have to put the pieces together to try and gauge how long the second longest bull market in history will continue. Some professionals are still wondering if the next recession is looming, and if a bear market is right around the corner. Investors commonly strive to locate the highest probability of success. The next goal may be to capitalize on what could become the most interesting part of the record bull market. Investors will most likely be concentrating on what has proven to work in the past, which may offer a better idea as to how successful the strategies will be heading into the second half of the year and beyond.

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Volume Moving the Tape For Shares of Green Planet Bioengineering Co Ltd (GPLB) and Nation Energy Inc (NEGY) - DARC News

I applied for the trip because I thought it sounded enjoyable and exciting and I would be able to learn about new things. I most enjoyed Pirate Training, where we got to make cannons, take part in fencing and archery and play capture the flag in an ice rink.

These are things I never thought I would do. Meeting the other students from NAE was great because they all seemed very similar to me and that made me feel a lot more confident about myself. It was also good fun to make new friends from around the world who I can continue to connect with through Nord Anglias Global Classroom.

MIT was a huge university, if I went there Id worry about getting lost but it looked like a nice place to live and learn. The same can be said for Harvard, which we also really enjoyed spending time at and learning about. If youre lucky enough to be picked next year, be prepared to take part in a range of activities which will make you work hard both physically and mentally, and pack some comfortable shoes as the MIT and Harvard sites are big and we did a lot of walking in order to visit the different facilities!

Iwan Jones, Year 7 student

When I first saw the STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art and maths) festival being offered by BISS Puxi I thought it would be an awesome opportunity to see how MIT use their research to apply science to the real world, and I was excited about these subjects. I knew it would be a great chance to work with other students who shared similar interests and to speak to students studying at MIT.

The activity I enjoyed the most was Biobuilder. In this session we learnt about how, in the future, we will be able to take parts of cells, which perform a certain function, and build it to make a new cell.

The most interesting aspect is these cells can be designed so they can be controlled to complete certain tasks. We used different shapes and colors to represent these different functions, and built a cell that would kill only cancer cells. This is a lot harder in real life, as you would need to take the cell and find what the function is before fusing the different parts together.

It was really fun working with schools from around the world, and we all felt like one big school. It was very easy to make friends with everyone and we were very upset to leave each other on Friday.

This experience has inspired me to go to a school like MIT because of all the different fields in science and technology I can have the chance to experience if I studied there. Some advice Id give to a student who plans to go next year is to really throw yourself into every activity and to make the most of this experience.

Alison Ohene-Djan, Year 7 student

When I heard about the chance to go to MIT I was really excited and applied to attend as I was sure I would learn a lot and I might not get the chance to attend something like this again.

Once we arrived we met with the students from all of the other Nord Anglia schools; I enjoyed working with different people from different places because they all had other stories and ideas to share. The fun really started once we got to start on the STEAM activities, I cant single out one particular activity because each one was a unique experience and fun in their own way, although I did enjoy being a pirate. This trip has inspired me to continue to work on areas of STEAM, Ive had the interest of going to universities like MIT before, but this trip just made me even more motivated to work hard and be accepted into a place like MIT. The one piece of advice I would give to students who plan to attend next years trip is to not worry so much about remembering everything that will be taught to you, if you enjoy and focus on the activity, you will pick it up along the way.

Liam Chan, Year 7 student

I applied for the trip because it is a once in a lifetime experience at one of the best universities in the world. Also, we would meet students from Nord Anglia schools around the world.

My favorite part was the 2.009 workshop, where in groups of ten we designed, and actually created, carnival games which could be used in real carnivals. Working with Professor David Wallace was a real highlight. I enjoyed collaborating with other schools because people from all across the globe worked together and came up with so many ideas to try and give the best possible answer.

The trip has definitely inspired me to attend MIT or universities like MIT because they have really good facilities and the professors teach lessons in a very exciting and interesting way. Advice that I would give students going next year would be: when stuck on a problem, look at things from a different perspective. The answer is usually there, it just needs more thought to reach it.

Emma Tang, Year 7 student

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Everything from pirate games to bioengineering - Shanghai Daily (subscription)

April 26, 2017

Researchers at the Texas Biomedical Device Center (TxBDC) at The University of Texas at Dallas have been awarded a contract worth up to $5.8 million from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to investigate a novel approach to accelerate the learning of foreign languages.

The contract is part of DARPA's Targeted Neuroplasticity Training (TNT) program, which seeks to advance the pace and effectiveness of a specific kind of learningcognitive skills trainingthrough precise activation of peripheral nerves, which in turn can strengthen neural connections in the brain.

"Military personnel are required to utilize a wide variety of complex perceptual, motor and cognitive skills under challenging conditions," said Dr. Robert Rennaker, Texas Instruments Distinguished Chair in Bioengineering, director of the TxBDC and chairman of the Department of Bioengineering.

"Mastery of these difficult skills, including fluency in foreign language, typically requires thousands of hours of practice," said Rennaker, who served in the U.S. Marine Corps.

DARPA's TNT program aims to develop an optimized strategy to accelerate acquisition of complex skills, which would significantly reduce the time needed to train foreign language specialists, intelligence analysts, cryptographers and others.

Rennaker and his colleagues at the TxBDC will focus on developing an approach that uses vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) during training to specifically reinforce neural networks that are involved in learning a particular task.

VNS is an FDA-approved method for treating various illnesses, such as depression and epilepsy. It involves sending a mild electric pulse through the vagus nerve in the neck. When stimulated, the vagus nerve affects the brain, where it boosts the release of chemicals called neuromodulators. These chemicals facilitate synaptic plasticity, a process in which the connections between brain cells change and strengthen during learning.

"Imagine you're struggling to learn something new, like multiplication tables or how to hit a golf ball. When you get it right, when that light bulb comes on, this system is being activated," Rennaker said. "By stimulating the vagus nerve during the learning process, we're artificially releasing these chemicals to enhance those connections active during learning."

In the DARPA project, the aim is to accelerate learning of foreign languages by stimulating the vagus nerve during specific tasks.

"DARPA is approaching the study of synaptic plasticity from multiple angles to determine whether there are safe and responsible ways to enhance learning and accelerate training for skills relevant to national security missions," said Doug Weber, TNT program manager at DARPA.

Over the past several years, researchers at the TxBDC have developed techniques to pair VNS with traditional rehabilitation to enhance recovery from an injury, an innovation they call Targeted Plasticity Therapy (TPT). In preliminary clinical studies, their technique has been shown to restore movements, reduce pain, increase feeling, improve memory and possibly speed up learning.

"This new project is focused on understanding if TPT can be used to accelerate learning in non-injured individuals," Rennaker said. "If successful, this approach could benefit not only those that need to rapidly learn a new language but also those with learning impediments or conditions such as autism or brain injuries."

Dr. Michael Kilgard, Margaret Fonde Jonsson Professor in the School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences and associate director of the TxBDC, is the principal investigator.

"We believe that we will be able to substantially increase the rate of language learning. With VNS, we may be able to improve on the brain's natural ability to learn," Kilgard said. "We're trying to march forward and make new technologies that aren't currently available. I think it's exciting."

In addition to Rennaker and Kilgard, other co-principal investigators on the project are Dr. Seth Hayes, assistant professor in the Department of Bioengineering; Dr. Sven Vanneste, associate professor in the School of Behavioral and Brain Sciences; and Dr. Diana Easton, clinical professor in the Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science. Also participating are Dr. Jane Wigginton from UT Southwestern Medical Center and Dr. Beverly Wright from Northwestern University.

Explore further: Researchers use vagus nerve stimulation outside the forebrain

A group of leading clinicians and experts dedicated to translational research in spinal cord injuries has recognized the work of a research fellow in the Texas Biomedical Device Center at UT Dallas.

A new study led by UT Dallas researchers shows that a gene associated with dyslexia may interfere with the processing of speech, ultimately leading to reading problems that are characteristic of the disorder.

A new study involving UT Dallas researchers shows that vagus nerve stimulation (VNS) technology could help improve the lives of hundreds of thousands of people who suffer weakness and paralysis caused by strokes.

UT Dallas researchers recently demonstrated how nerve stimulation paired with specific experiences, such as movements or sounds, can reorganize the brain. This technology could lead to new treatments for stroke, tinnitus, ...

(Medical Xpress) -- UT Dallas researchers recently demonstrated how nerve stimulation paired with specific experiences, such as movements or sounds, can reorganize the brain. This technology could lead to new treatments for ...

(Medical Xpress)Researchers at The University of Texas at Dallas have taken a step toward developing a new treatment to aid the recovery of limb function after strokes.

Peering into laboratory glassware, Stanford University School of Medicine researchers have watched stem-cell-derived nerve cells arising in a specific region of the human brain migrate into another brain region. This process ...

In two independent studies, scientists at the University of Basel have demonstrated that both the structure of the brain and several memory functions are linked to immune system genes. The scientific journals Nature Communications ...

Scientists write in Nature Communications it may be possible to therapeutically fine tune a constantly shifting balance of molecular signals to ensure the body's peripheral nerves are properly insulated and functioning normally. ...

An international collaboration of neuroscientists has shed light on how the brain helps us to predict what is coming next in speech.

Using human skin cells, University of California, Irvine neurobiologists and their colleagues have created a method to generate one of the principle cell types of the brain called microglia, which play a key role in preserving ...

Have you ever thought someone was angry at you, but it turned out you were just misreading their facial expression? Caltech researchers have now discovered that one specific region of the brain, called the amygdala, is involved ...

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Researchers investigate technique to accelerate learning - Medical Xpress

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The New York Post reportsthat ten-year-old Isabella Nicola Cabrera was born with no left hand, but thanks to a specialized prosthesis created by a team of bioengineering students at the George Mason University, Cabrera can once again play the violin.

Cabrerasmusic teacher and her school had previously built a rudimentary prosthesis that she used successfullyfor years, but ABC News reports the prosthetic was heavy. The instructor contacted the bioengineering students at the George Mason University, where he had graduated from, to see if they could develop something more advanced for the young musician.

Bioengineering studentsAbdul Gouda, Mona Elkholy, Ella Novoselsky, Racha Salha, and Yasser Alhindi decided to take on designing the prosthetic as a project required of them for their senior year. Its sort of a lot of pressure, Gouda told ABC News. Youve got this young girl whos counting on you and youre expected to deliver.

At atest fitting on Thursday, the team of bioengineers also surprised Cabrera with a secondary attachment for the prosthesis which would allow her to ride a bicycle.

Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan_ or email him at lnolan@breitbart.com

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Engineers Develop Prosthetic Arm That Allows Girl to Play Violin - Breitbart News

ALBANY A pair of Albany High School science teams enjoyed tremendous success at competitions this year, furthering the local school systems academic reputation.

The 15-member Science Olympiad team from AHS won its regional competition in March, then finished fifth at the Northern California championships on April 1.

Also on April 1, a team of five students in the Biology Club finished second at the Cal Bioengineering Honor Society Bioengineering Competition.

This year we werent really expecting anything at all, said Emily Lu, a sophomore who is on the Science Olympiad team. When they announced first we were all crying, she said of winning the Bay Area Regional Science Olympiad (BARSO), the regional competition.

The Science Olympiad team is Lu, Alex Kireeff, Amal Kaduwela, Brandon Chen, Evan Zhong, Maria Fedyk, Ishaan Das, Jonathan Luo, Milo Kearney, Nathan Skinner, Philip Lee, Ruby Tang, Thomas Lee, William Li and Yunfan Zhong.

The team was advised by Albany High teacher Valerie Risk, as well as parent-coaches Ajith Kaduwela, Yishi Chen, Charles Lee and Annette Chan.

The competition appeals to the students, most of whom have been competing in Science Olympiad since they attended Albany Middle School.

This is definitely a team event but its a very interesting team event, said Phillip Lee, a junior who competes with his brother Thomas Lee, a freshman.

There are 23 events in a competition. They include build events, such as Robotic Arm, where competitors have to build a robot that can pick up stacks of pennies, flip them from heads to tails and stack them neatly on a target. Other events also have written tests.

Amal Kaduwela, a sophomore, competed in Robotic Arm, Hovercraft and Optics. The latter involved taking a laser light and using up to five mirrors to reflect that laser to an end point. You can turn on the laser one time and if you miss, you dont get a second chance.

Kaduwela said he and his partners can always get it right in practice but it has sometimes been a struggle in the competitions.

I think every tournament, except maybe one, we messed up the laser shot, he said. It just slightly missed a mirror. At the practice, wed hit it dead on. Every time we learned something new but there was something else that messed up the next time.

Lu competed in four events, including tower. In that competition, she and her teammates had to build a tower out of balsa wood that met certain specifications. It needed to support 15 kilograms but also be light of weight itself.

The Lee brothers competed in Micro Mission together. They each do other events with other teammates as well.

Phillip Lee said, The parents are like, Oh, you have two brothers. Dont they fight all the time? Thomas Lee dispelled that notion.

Its really cool working with my brother, he said. We dont usually fight.

The Biology Club team is made up of sophomore Wendy Liu and freshmen Jerry Min, Omar Ibrahim, Caleb Williams and Trevor Ryan. Maureen Wiser is their faculty adviser. The team finished second with their project, Utilizing Snails to Biodegrade PET Plastics by Cultivating Bacteria Inside Their Digestive Tract.

Lu said the success of the Science Olympiad is leading to more interest at school. She said about 50 kids have joined up at the middle school level and about 30 have joined at the high school.

Because its not just an individual thing, its a team thing, so more people are joining, she said. Thats promoting STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) in Albany.

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Albany High science teams find winning formula - East Bay Times

Researchers at the University of California San Diego discovered that high blood levels of RNA produced by the PHGDH gene could serve as a biomarker for early detection of Alzheimers disease. The work could lead to the development of a blood test to identify individuals who will develop the disease years before they show symptoms.

The team published their findingsin Current Biology.

The PHGDH gene produces RNA and proteins that are critical for brain development and function in infants, children and adolescents. As people get older, the gene typically ramps down its production of these RNAs and proteins. The new study, led by Sheng Zhong, a professor of bioengineering at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering in collaboration with Dr. Edward Koo, a professor of neuroscience at the UC San Diego School of Medicine, suggests that overproduction of a type of RNA, called extracellular RNA (exRNA), by the PHGDH gene in the elderly could provide an early warning sign of Alzheimers disease.

Several known changes associated with Alzheimers disease usually show up around the time of clinical diagnosis, which is a little too late. We had a hunch that there is a molecular predictor that would show up years before, and thats what motivated this study, Zhong said.

The discovery was made possible thanks to a technique developed by Zhong and colleagues that is sensitive enough to sequence tens of thousands of exRNAs in less than one drop of blood. The method, dubbed SILVER-SEQ, was used to analyze the exRNA profiles in blood samples of 35 elderly individuals 70 years and older who were monitored up to 15 years prior to death. The subjects consisted of 15 patients with Alzheimers disease; 11 converters, which are subjects who were initially healthy then later developed Alzheimers; and 9 healthy controls. Clinical diagnoses were confirmed by analysis of post-mortem brain tissue.

The results showed a steep increase in PHGDH exRNA production in all converters approximately two years before they were clinically diagnosed with Alzheimers. PHGDH exRNA levels were on average higher in Alzheimers patients. They did not exhibit an increasing trend in the controls, except for in one control that became classified as a converter.

The researchers note some uncertainty regarding the anomalous converter. Since the subject died sometime during the 15-year monitoring, it is unclear whether that individual would have indeed developed Alzheimers if he or she lived longer, Zhong said.

The team acknowledges additional limitations of the study.

This is a retrospective study based on clinical follow-ups from the past, not a randomized clinical trial on a larger sample size. So we are not yet calling this a verified blood test for Alzheimers disease, said co-first author Zixu Zhou, a bioengineering alumnus from Zhongs lab who is now at Genemo Inc., a startup founded by Zhong. Nevertheless, our data, which were from clinically collected samples, strongly support the discovery of a biomarker for predicting the development of Alzheimers disease.

In addition to randomized trials, future studies will include testing if the PHGDH biomarker can be used to identify patients who will respond to drugs for Alzheimers disease.

The team is also open to collaborating with Alzheimers research groups that might be interested in testing and validating this biomarker.

If our results can be replicated by other centers and expanded to more cases, then it suggests that there are biomarkers outside of the brain that are altered before clinical disease onset and that these changes also predict the possible onset or development of Alzheimers disease, Koo said.If this PDGDH signal is shown to be accurate, it can be quite informative for diagnosis and even treatment response for Alzheimers research.

This study was performed in collaboration with Genemo Inc.

Paper title: Presymptomatic Increase of an Extracellular RNA in Blood Plasma Associates with the Development of Alzheimers Disease. Co-authors include Zhangming Yan*, UC San Diego; Qiuyang Wu*, Genemo Inc.; and Zhen Chen, Beckman Research Institute.

*These authors contributed equally

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Discovery of New Biomarker in Blood Could Lead to Early Test for Alzheimer's Disease - UC San Diego Health

The Center for Research Computings Spatial Studies Lab created a dashboard that tracks COVID-19 cases, hospital bed utilization rates and testing locations in Texas. Screenshot from coronavirusintexas.org

By Rynd Morgan 4/8/20 4:11pm

Rice officials announced that a $1 million accelerator fund will be established to support COVID-19-related research projects, according to a press release on Monday.

Rice has set a goal of $1 million for research funding, according to the Rice News article. The funding will be divided between $500,000 already allocated by the university, $500,000 raised from donors and federal support to make up for the initial university investment.

Yousif Shamoo, vice provost for research and a professor of biosciences, said the decision to undertake this research mission came directly in response to ideas from faculty, staff and students.

Shamoo said that research conducted under the fund will investigate how to end the spread of COVID-19 and how to plan for future pandemics.

Recovery means understanding how society and people will come to grips with their loss and how society may be changed, Shamoo said. There are a lot of lessons to be learned from this horrible situation. We would be fools to not learn from this.

The Office of Research, the Office of the President, the Educational and Research Initiatives for Collaborative Health at Rice, the university institutes (the Ken Kennedy Institute, the Institute of Biosciences and Bioengineering, the Kinder Institute for Urban Research and the Smalley-Curl Institute) and a task force in the department of bioengineering are working together in research efforts supported by the fund, according to Shamoo.

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The department of bioengineering has organized a COVID-19 working group, co-chaired by Assistant Professor Jerzy Szablowski and Rice 360 Institute for Global Health Director Rebecca Richards-Kortum, according to the press release. The working group is one of several projects approved to access the fund.

Richards-Kortum said that the working group started in the bioengineering department, but quickly expanded into multiple groups which include colleagues from additional departments. The working groups are focused on topics such as developing diagnostics, therapeutics and vaccine strategies, locally manufacturing personal protective equipment, scientific outreach and social science outreach.

We are all trying to use our skills and resources to contribute to the pandemic where we can, especially to support our colleagues in the Texas Medical Center who are on the frontlines, Richards-Kortum said.

The Rice Data to Knowledge Lab is also working together with the Rice DataSci Club to sponsor a student competition to apply data science and computing skills and bring a deeper analysis of the spread and impact of COVID-19 in Houston. The competition is also supported by the research fund.

Cole Morgan, president of Rice DataSci Club, said that the club is currently organizing a two-week competition called COVID-19 Houston Community Projects to solve local challenges related to the COVID-19 pandemic, with up to $5,000 in prize money for multiple groups to win.

Researchers at Rice have already been working on COVID-19-related projects prior to this announcement. The Center for Research Computings Spatial Studies Lab created a dashboard that tracks COVID-19 cases, hospital bed utilization rates and testing locations in Texas. The dashboard, one of four created by the lab so far, was a spontaneous effort that started over spring break, according to Fars el-Dahdah, director of the Humanities Research Center. Their first dashboard created for Brazil has received more than 700,000 views online, said el-Dahdah. The group has also recently published a dashboard for Harris County specifically.

Shamoo said that his office is translating the passion to do good during a time of crisis into a program that Rice can be proud of.

Even in the best of times the writing, reviewing and awarding of funding from the federal government takes months and many aspects of the COVID-19 response need action now, Shamoo said. We have talented faculty, staff and students that can do things right now that can make a difference.

[4/8/20 6:38 p.m.] This article has been corrected to reflect that the Coronavirus dashboard created by the Center for Research Computings Spatial Studies Lab was not supported by the COVID-19 accelerator fund.

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Rice announces $1 million COVID-19 research fund - The Rice Thresher

Students from George Mason University design prosthetic arm for violist

Peggy Fox, WUSA 7:28 PM. EDT April 20, 2017

FAIRFAX, VA (WUSA9) - A new beginning for a Fairfax County girl who has just received a new prosthetic arm that was designed and 3-D printed by George Mason University college students.

Isabella Nicola, 10, has been raised by her mother, Andrea Cabrera, to never say never.

"My mom's phrase is, when you say 'I can't do it', it's 'I can't do it yet,'" said Nicola.

The fifth grader signed up to play violin in the strings program at Island Creek Elementary in Franconia last year, even though she knew it'd be a little difficult.

RELATED:Dog rescued from slaughterhouse gets prosthetic legs

She was born with an incomplete left arm. Her music teacher fashioned a makeshift prosthetic arm out of PVC to hold her bow. Then he a called his alma mater and got the engineering department on board.

But now, Isabella has a bright pink, custom-made, brand new prosthetic arm that allows her to hold and move the bow properly.

"I have to say thank you to them because without them I couldn't really be able to play," said Nicola.

The five students have been working as a team for more than a year on their capstone senior project. It was designed, 3D printed, and pieced together by five George Mason University bioengineering students, Yasser Alhindi, the lead, Abdul Gouda, Mona Elkholy, Ella Novoselsky and Racha Salha.

Dr. Elizabeth Adams, a GMU music teacher, explained that a player's arm movement affects the violin's sound. Adams worked with the students and Isabella, providing advice.

The faculty mentors are Wilsaan Joiner and Vasiliki Ikonomidou. Laurence Bray is head of the bioengineering department.

"We were brainstorming ideas right away. We were aiming to take the strain off her shoulder to make her as comfortable as possible," said Ella Novoselsky.

RELATED:Injured animals get life-changing prosthetics

"It's amazing. They didn't have any background when they started, of the mechanical engineering aspect. I'm amazed. When they came to me with all those designs, and they told me, this is going to go there and this will go like that. 'Ok, sure,'" saidVasiliki Ikonomidou, one of the mentors said about the student designers.

For Thursday's hand-off, the students had a surprise for Isabella. They also made a grip so that she can ride bike with both arms. Isabella beamed as she held it like she was holding the handlebars.

"Very cool and nice...They thought about other things. They went above and beyond," said Isabella.

She and the college students hit if off from the start. At their first meeting, Racha Salha said Isabella was "making jokes and laughing. We were actually the ones who were nervous....She's amazing."

"I want her to play the violin and love playing the violin and be excited. And I want her to believe she can do anything she wants," said Ella Novoselsky.

The bioengineering department has already received more inquiries from other people, so another group of students could soon have a new project on their hands.

2017 WUSA-TV

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GMU students make 3D printed prosthetic arm for violinist | WUSA9 ... - W*USA 9