The Biogerontology Research Foundation (BGRF) has used gene expression data to evaluate activated or suppressed signaling pathways in tissues or neurons of the mouse brain that has been cognitively enhanced with nootropic drugs.

Currently used cognitive enhancers are those that are widely available, rather than optimal for the user, the researchers note. These include drugs typically prescribed for treatment of ADHD (e.g., methylphenidate) and sleep disturbances such as narcolepsy (modafinil). The researchers want to quantify the effects with objective measures and thus predict the efficacy of the many drugs that may enhance various aspects of cognition — before costly preclinical studies and clinical trials are undertaken.

The research, published in open-access Frontiers in Systems Neuroscience, uses an algorithm that maps expression data onto signaling pathways. The collective pathways and their activation form a “signaling pathway cloud” — a biological fingerprint of cognitive enhancement. Drugs can then be screened and ranked based on their ability to minimize, mimic, or exaggerate pathway activation or suppression within that cloud.

“Our current work in predicting the efficacy of drugs and drug combinations in treating and preventing some of the most age-related diseases, suggests that some likely geroprotectors may also enhance cognitive function, said Alex Zhavoronkov, PhD, director of the BGRF. “We are actively seeking academic and industry collaborators for this exciting neuroscience project.”

The BGRF is a UK-based charity committed to the support of aging research.

Leeds scientists have shown that gold nanotubes can fight cancer in three ways: as internal nanoprobes for high-resolution photoacoustic imaging, as drug delivery vehicles, and as agents for destroying cancer cells.

The study, published in the journal Advanced Functional Materials, details the first successful demonstration of the biomedical use of gold nanotubes in a mouse model of human cancer — an alternative to existing chemotherapy and radiotherapy methods, which have serious side effects.

“To the best of our knowledge, this is the first [combination] in vitro [lab] and in vivo [live in animals] study of gold nanotubes,” the researchers say.

According to study lead author Sunjie Ye, who is based in the School of Physics and Astronomy and the Leeds Institute for Biomedical and Clinical Sciences at the University of Leeds, “high recurrence rates of tumors after surgical removal remain a formidable challenge in cancer therapy. Gold nanotubes have the potential to enhance the efficacy of these conventional treatments by integrating diagnosis and therapy in one single system.”

The researchers injected the gold nanotubes intravenously. They controlled the length of the nanotubes for the right dimensions to absorb near-infrared light (which penetrates tissue well) from a pulsed infrared laser beam.

By adjusting the brightness of the laser pulse, the researchers were able to control whether the gold nanotubes were in imaging mode or cancer-destruction mode.

For imaging, after absorbing energy from the laser pulse, the gold nanotubes generated ultrasound for multispectral optoacoustic tomography (MSOT), used to detect the gold nanotubes.

For cancer destruction, there were two options:

• Use a stronger laser beam to rapidly raise the temperature in the vicinity of the nanotubes so that the temperature was high enough to destroy cancer cells.
• Load the central hollow core of the nanotubes with a therapeutic payload.

The gold nanotubes were coated with a coating of protective sodium polystyrenesulfonate (PSS) and were excreted from the body, and therefore are unlikely to cause problems in terms of toxicity, an important consideration when developing nanoparticles for clinical use, the researchers say.

A Purdue innovation that enables people to use a new class of hands-free, gesture-based 3D modeling software is being commercialized by Zero UI, a Cupertino, California-based company that specializes in 3D modeling technology.

The technology, called Harry-Potter, addresses the complexity and limitations of conventional computer-aided-design (CAD) tools used to create geometric shapes.

Harry-Potter uses a Kinect depth-sensing camera with advanced software algorithms to interpret hand movements and gestures.

Easy to use

“This technology is very simple and easy for users, but behind that simplicity are complicated and intelligent algorithms that represent a state-of-the-art synthesis of machine learning and geometric modeling,” Ramani said.

The technology could have applications in the areas of games, architecture, art, and engineering design. It was developed in the laboratory of Karthik Ramani, Purdue University’s Donald W. Feddersen Professor of Mechanical Engineering and co-founder and chief scientist of Zero UI.

“This technology is very simple and easy for users, but behind that simplicity are complicated and intelligent algorithms that represent a state-of-the-art synthesis of machine learning and geometric modeling,” Ramani said.

“The technology could change the way people interact with the computer. This tool allows people to express their ideas rapidly and quickly using hand motions alone. We want to make it a natural action for people to gesture to a computer screen and create things with their hands.”

Zero UI founder and CEO Raja Jasti said Handy Potter is designed to help anyone create digital models such as drums, tables, lamps, and other objects on a computer and then print the designs on a 3D printer.

“You don’t have to be an architect or an engineer to use this software,” he said.

The research was funded in part by the National Science Foundation.

For information on other Purdue’s available technologies visit otc-prf.org/otc or email innovation@prf.org

About Zero IU

ZeroUI is developing the world’s first hands-free 3D modeling technology. It enables anyone to create and interact with 3D models in 3D space using their hands in a natural way similar to potters and sculptors.

About Purdue Office of Technology Commercialization

The Purdue Office of Technology Commercialization operates one of the most comprehensive technology-transfer programs among leading research universities in the United States. Services provided by this office support the economic development initiatives of Purdue University and benefit the university’s academic activities. The office is managed by the Purdue Research Foundation, which received the 2014 Incubator Network of the Year from the National Business Incubation Association for its work in entrepreneurship. For more information about funding and investment opportunities in startups based on a Purdue innovation, contact the Purdue Foundry at foundry@prf.org

Abstract for Handy-Potter: Rapid 3d shape exploration through natural hand motions

We present the paradigm of natural and exploratory shape modeling by introducing novel 3D interactions for creating, modifying and manipulating 3D shapes using arms and hands. Though current design tools provide complex modeling functionalities, they remain non-intuitive and require significant training since they segregate 3D shapes into hierarchical 2D inputs, thus binding the user to stringent procedural steps and making modifications cumbersome. In addition the designer knows what to design when they go to CAD systems and the creative exploration in design is lost. We present a shape creation paradigm as an exploration of creative imagination and externalization of shapes, particularly in the early phases of design. We integrate the capability of humans to express 3D shapes via hand-arm motions with traditional sweep surface representation to demonstrate rapid exploration of a rich variety of fairly complex 3D shapes. We track the skeleton of users using the depth data provided by low cost depth sensing camera (KinectTM). Our modeling tool is con- figurable to provide a variety of implicit constraints for shape symmetry and resolution based on the position, orientation and speed of the arms. Intuitive strategies for coarse and fine shape modifications are also proposed. We conclusively demonstrate the creation of a wide variety of product concepts and show an average modeling time of a only few seconds while retaining the intuitiveness of communicating the design intent.

http://www.kurzweilai.net/purdue-spinoff-commercializes-new-design-tool-that-helps-users-create-computer-generated-shapes-without-using-a-mouse

ETH researchers have found an error-free  way to store information in the form of DNA, potentially preserving it for millions of years: encapsulate the information-bearing segments of DNA in silica (glass), using an error-correcting information-encoding scheme.

Scrolls thousands of years old provide us with a glimpse into long-forgotten cultures and the knowledge of our ancestors. In this digital era, in contrast, a large part of our knowledge is located on servers and hard drives, which may not survive 50 years, let alone thousands of years. So researchers are searching for new ways to store large volumes of data over the long term.

Recently, 300,000 year old mitochondrial DNA from bears and humans has been sequenced. DNA has also been utilized as a coding language, for applications in forensics, product tagging, and DNA computing, the researchers note.

Two years ago, researchers demonstrated that data could be compactly saved and reread in the form of DNA. The time between “writing” the information — synthesis of the corresponding coding sequence of the DNA — and reading (sequencing) the data was very short.

Synthetic fossils

”Over the longer term, DNA can change significantly as it reacts chemically with the environment, thus presenting an obstacle to long-term storage. However, genetic material found in fossilized bones several hundreds of thousands of years old can be isolated and analyzed, since it’s been encapsulated and protected.

“Similar to these bones, we wanted to protect the information-bearing DNA with a synthetic ‘fossil’ shell,” explains Robert Grass, a lecturer at ETH Zurich’s Department of Chemistry and Applied Biosciences.

To do that, his team encapsulated the DNA in silica spheres with a diameter of about 150 nanometers. The researchers encoded Switzerland’s Federal Charter of 1291 and The Methods of Mechanical Theorems by Archimedes in the DNA.

Simulating data degradation

To simulate the degradation of the information-bearing DNA over a long period of time, researchers stored it at a temperature of between 60 and 70 degrees Celsius for up to a month. Such high temperatures replicate the chemical degradation that takes place over hundreds of years within a few weeks.

That allowed the researchers to compare DNA storage in a sheath of silica glass with other common storage methods: on impregnated filter paper and in a biopolymer. The DNA encapsulated in the glass shell turned out to be particularly robust. By using a fluoride solution, it could be easily separated from the silica glass, and the information read from it.

Since encapsulation in silica is roughly comparable to encapsulation in bones, researchers could draw on prehistoric information about the long-term stability of encapsulated DNA and from this calculate a prognosis

By storing it at low temperatures, such as that found in the Svalbard Global Seed Vault (minus 18 degrees Celsius), DNA-encoded information can survive more than a million years, the researchers suggest. In contrast, data projected on microfilm can be preserved only for an estimated 500 years.

Retrieving lost data

But it’s not enough to simply store the information over long periods of time without substantial damage; the data must also be able to be read free of error. Thanks to significant technological advancements in DNA sequencing, reading stored data is now affordable and will become even more cost-effective in the future. These technologies, however, are not error-free.

To deal with this, Reinhard Heckel from ETH Zurich’s Communication Technology Laboratory developed a scheme to correct these errors based on the Reed-Solomon Codes, similar to those that are used in the transmission of data over long distances; for example, radio communication with spacecraft.

The key is redundant information attached to the actual data, explains Heckel. “In order to define a parabola, you basically need only three points. We added a further two in case one gets lost or is shifted.” The DNA-encoded data is indeed more complex, but in principle the researchers’ DNA-encrypted security ‘back-up’ functions in the same manner. Even when stored in adverse conditions, the information saved for the test — Switzerland’s Federal Charter and Archimedes’ text — could be retrieved error-free.

Their data further predict that digital information could be stored encapsulated in silica at the Global Seed Vault (at –88⁰C) for more than 2 million years.

What kind of information would Grass save for millions of years? The documents in Unesco’s Memory of the World Programme, he says, and Wikipedia: “Many entries are described in detail, others less so. This probably provides a good overview of what our society knows, what occupies it and to what extent.”

http://www.kurzweilai.net/how-to-store-data-for-millions-of-years

A new intraoperative handheld probe for cancer-cell-detection enables surgeons, for the first time, to detect more than 92% of invasive brain cancer cells in real time during surgery, according to its developers at the Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital – The Neuro, McGill University MUHC, and Polytechnique Montréal.

“Often it is impossible to visually distinguish cancer from normal brain, so invasive brain cancer cells frequently remain after surgery, leading to cancer recurrence and a worse prognosis,” says Kevin Petrecca, MD, Chief of Neurosurgery and brain cancer researcher at The Neuro and co-senior author of the study published in Science Translational Medicine. “Surgically minimizing the number of cancer cells improves patient outcomes.”

According to co-developer Frédéric Leblond, PhD, Professor in Engineering Physics at Polytechnique Montréal, and co-senior author of the study, the probe technique uses Raman spectroscopy laser technology to measure light scattered from molecules, based on preliminary tests on patients with grade 2, 3 and 4 gliomas.

“The emitted light provides a spectroscopic signal that can be interpreted to provide specific information about the molecular makeup of the interrogated tissue,” says Leblond.

The Montreal Neurological Institute and Hospital plans to launch a trial for patients with newly diagnosed and recurrentglioblastoma.

This work was supported by the Fonds de recherche du Québec–Nature et technologies, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, and the Groupe de recherche en sciences et technologies biomédicales.

Abstract of Intraoperative brain cancer detection with Raman spectroscopy in humans

Cancers are often impossible to visually distinguish from normal tissue. This is critical for brain cancer where residual invasive cancer cells frequently remain after surgery, leading to disease recurrence and a negative impact on overall survival. No preoperative or intraoperative technology exists to identify all cancer cells that have invaded normal brain. To address this problem, we developed a handheld contact Raman spectroscopy probe technique for live, local detection of cancer cells in the human brain. Using this probe intraoperatively, we were able to accurately differentiate normal brain from dense cancer and normal brain invaded by cancer cells, with a sensitivity of 93% and a specificity of 91%. This Raman-based probe enabled detection of the previously undetectable diffusely invasive brain cancer cells at cellular resolution in patients with grade 2 to 4 gliomas. This intraoperative technology may therefore be able to classify cell populations in real time, making it an ideal guide for surgical resection and decision-making.