Month: November 2016
https://www.thestar.com/news/world/2016/11/26/take-one-egg-cool-to-196-c-revolutionize-fertility.html
Take one egg. Cool to -196 C. Revolutionize fertility
Advances in freezing human eggs have made IVF easier and cheaper for many, but bring thorny new questions
ROCKVILLE, MD.—Calling it womb-like would be a stretch, but inside Shady Grove Fertility centre’s inner laboratory, the incandescent lights are lowered to a soothing dimness. Temperature and pH are carefully controlled.
An embryologist peers through a microscope, scanning the follicular fluid extracted from a woman’s ovaries just moments ago. She is looking for a fat polka dot embedded in a cloud of tiny cells.
“We don’t want these eggs to think they’re out of the body. We want them to be happy as can be,” says Wayne Caswell, executive director of technology and quality for Donor Egg Bank USA, a business that partners with the clinic.
“One! Got it!” the embryologist cries. Within minutes, the egg is trimmed clean and siphoned into a nourishing liquid.
Hundreds of thousands of such “egg retrievals,” a procedure necessary for both traditional IVF and gestational surrogacy, are performed around the world yearly. And until recently, every egg retrieved this way was constrained to a single, narrow path.
Fertility doctors have been using frozen sperm to create pregnancies for more than 60 years. But eggs confounded the cryopreservation process. Once an egg was outside the body, it almost always had to be inseminated within hours and transferred to a uterus within days.
Technology has changed that. Now eggs can be frozen like sperm — and anything a male sex cell can do from that point on, a female one can, too.
“Vitrification,” as the new technique is called, has made many avenues of assisted reproduction safer, cheaper, more efficient and easier to access. But unsurprisingly for a technology that creates human beings, egg freezing, by unravelling one biological knot, has created a tangle of new questions about gender, work, health and religion.
Those in need of an egg donor can choose one anywhere in the world, allowing greater control over traits like race. Women who fear their reproductive potential will be compromised before they plan to get pregnant can preserve their own eggs until ready to use them — a surging business that did not exist until recently.
In the world of international surrogacy — where the woman providing the egg, the woman carrying the pregnancy, and the couple raising the child may be continents apart — vitrification has made co-ordination much easier, sending sex cells and embryos ping-ponging around the globe. That has been a boon to many families and a headache for international law.
Egg freezing has “been really revolutionary,” the biggest leap in the field of assisted reproductive technology in a quarter-century, says Caswell.
Roughly one in 55 babies born in Canada is conceived with IVF. The number of Canadian women banking their own eggs has more than tripled in five years, and surrogacy has surged. This revolution will alter how thousands of Canadians build families — and the way non-Canadians create families on our soil. Those who will never use egg freezing have a stake too: Health Canada wants public feedback as it struggles to regulate assisted reproduction in a way that reflects the country’s values, even as borders lose relevancy.
In the rapidly evolving drama of egg freezing, both the Pope and Octomom have a cameo — and no one knows what the ending will look like.
The first known instance of human sperm donation occurred in 1884 in Philadelphia. A rich merchant was troubled that he and his wife could not conceive, according to a report in the journal Medical World. The couple visited a Professor Pancoast, who along with his medical students discovered the merchant had no sperm in his semen.
They chose the best-looking student, administered chloroform to the wife, and inserted the student’s semen in her uterus. The couple was unaware of the experiment.
Nine months later, the wife gave birth. Eventually, the professor confessed to the merchant, who was “delighted with the idea, and conspired with the professor in keeping from the lady the actual way by which her impregnation was brought about.”
In 1953, researchers announced the first successful human pregnancy using previously frozen sperm. The subsequent two decades saw leaps forward in cryobiology.
By the 1980s, dozens of American sperm donation programs had opened. By the 1990s, after the AIDS crisis forced clinics to quarantine samples, fresh donor programs closed and cryobanks expanded.
As sperm banks boomed, researchers and doctors turned to freezing other reproductive tissues. Embryos saw decent post-thaw survival rates. But the technology floundered when applied to eggs.
“By the mid-’90s, embryo banking and embryo freezing had become fairly routine,” says Mark Sauer, a professor of reproductive endocrinology and infertility at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons and a pioneer of egg donation. “But when extended to eggs, it wasn’t very promising.”
The problem lies in the starkly different biology of male and female sex cells.
Sperm are one of the smallest cells in the human body. The DNA in the nucleus of these cells is compacted to one-sixth the normal size, and the nucleus nearly fills the cell. Sperm carry very little cytoplasm, the water-based solution that usually fills cell bodies.
Cryopreserving sperm is relatively simple. The usual method involves adding a cryoprotectant like glycerol to the sample, which replaces what little water exists in the cells. Then the sample is gradually cooled in liquid nitrogen vapour, a technique known as slow freezing.
Once frozen, the sample is stored at -196 C in tanks of liquid nitrogen. About half the cells in a sample will die once it is thawed. But with tens of millions of sperm cells in a single ejaculate, usually enough will survive to inseminate an egg. Donor screening and other protocols have improved, but the basic technology of sperm freezing has not changed in 40 years.
Eggs could not be more different.
Eggs are the largest cell in the human body, about 25 times the size of a sperm and full of cytoplasm. When researchers started experimenting with egg freezing in the 1980s, the water inside the cell would crystallize into ice, rupturing the cell membrane and destroying its viability.
Occasionally, the slow-freezing method worked. But when one clinic reported a rare success, others couldn’t replicate it — and human ovaries only release about 400 mature eggs between puberty and menopause, so they are a limited resource.
“It was considered largely experimental,” Sauer says, relegated only to those with little choice, like cancer patients whose chemotherapy was almost certain to render them sterile.
For most, fresh eggs were the only option. And hopeful parents-to-be for whom healthy eggs are a barrier to baby-making —including men in same-sex relationships, couples struggling with “female-factor” infertility, transgender women and single men — were tied to the precarious timing of the retrieval process.
The first step of that process is finding a willing donor, one who has typically passed a multi-stage screening and can commit to the lengthy process. Whether the donor is known or anonymous, legal agreements are usually necessary.
With the commitment formalized, the donor’s menstrual cycle must be synchronized with the person who will carry the pregnancy. That person may be someone who hopes to raise the child or a gestational surrogate. Injected hormonal drugs are used to stimulate the donor’s ovaries to produce more than the typical single egg: 12 to 15 is not unusual.
When ultrasounds and blood tests indicate that the egg-bearing follicles on the ovaries’ surface are mature, the donor receives a “trigger shot” of hormones, and 36 hours later arrives at the clinic. There she undergoes a mild or “twilight” form of anesthesia while a doctor inserts a long needle into her vagina. Using ultrasound to guide it towards her ovarian follicles, the doctor hoovers up the fluid inside them.
The embryologist at Shady Grove Fertility was completing the next step: searching through the extracted fluid for egg masses, clouds of cells — literally a “cumulus” — that usually surround mature eggs. Reputable fertility centres will have the same carefully controlled climate as the Rockville lab, since both eggs and embryos are highly sensitive to “environmental insult”: fluorescent lighting and paints that emit volatile organic compounds can scramble their DNA.
After the eggs are trimmed of their cumulus in the lab, they are inseminated in a petri dish — with sperm produced by one of the intended parents or with donated sperm — and left in an incubator to develop into early-stage embryos, usually one to seven days old. Some of those embryos are then implanted in the uterus of whoever hopes to carry the pregnancy to term.
If too few follicles grow, or too many (a risk of ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome), or if no fertilized eggs develop into healthy embryos, or if the embryos do not take hold in the uterus — just a few things that can go wrong — the entire process is either delayed or restarted, assuming every person in the arrangement is psychologically, physically and financially ready.
Workarounds exist. Freezing embryos avoids the hassle of synchronizing the egg donor’s and the pregnancy carrier’s cycles — especially helpful for international surrogacy arrangements. But with slow-freezing, only about 70 per cent of embryos survived the thaw, raising the chances of requiring more egg retrieval cycles.
“Traditional” rather than gestational surrogacy, in which the pregnancy carrier is also the egg donor, can avoid the entire IVF process by using intrauterine insemination — transferring semen directly into the surrogate’s uterus while she is ovulating. But traditional surrogacy is unpopular, because it means the surrogate shares half her genes with the child she is carrying, a complicated biological and legal connection.
Unsurprisingly, given the hurdles involved in egg donation, it was a full century after Pancoast’s haphazard donor sperm experiment, in 1983, when the first baby born via donor egg was reported.
In an exquisite irony, the Catholic Church would soon play a role in easing the technological challenges of egg donation.
To most, Natalie Suleman is better known as Octomom, a made-in-America tabloid sensation who gave birth to octuplets in 2009. To those who work in assisted reproductive technology, or ART, Suleman’s name is a byword for substandard care.
Suleman became pregnant with octuplets after a fertility doctor in Beverly Hills, Michael Kamrava, implanted her with 12 embryos. As he later testified at a Medical Board of California hearing covered by the Los Angeles Times, Suleman insisted that he implant the entire batch of embryos because she didn’t want to freeze or donate any.
Higher-order multiples — triplets and beyond — ratchet up the risk of complications. Sixty per cent of multiples are born prematurely, and one-fifth of triplet pregnancies result in at least one child with a major disability.
Kamrava’s decision amounted to gross negligence: except in very challenging cases, both the Canadian Fertility and Andrology Society and the American Society of Reproductive Medicine recommend implanting one or two embryos. Any embryos that aren’t immediately implanted are either discarded, donated to science or another couple, or frozen for another attempt.
Studies of fertility clinic patients report that deciding whether to use, discard or donate cryopreserved embryos is often distressing (and can spark legal conflict for couples that split).
In 2004, Italy’s parliament codified a law that circumvented such decisions, leaving very few options for fertility clinics and patients.
IVF is prohibited by the Catholic Church. Pope Francis has called it “Playing with life . . . a sin against the Creator.” The Italian law banned fertilizing more than three eggs at a time and required all embryos to be transferred simultaneously. It also prohibited the cryopreservation of embryos, using embryos for research, egg and sperm donation, and IVF for anyone but married heterosexual couples.
If an Italian woman undergoing IVF produced 18 eggs in one retrieval, only three could be used (or just one, if she wanted to avoid the risk of multiples). The other eggs had to be discarded.
Other countries have passed ART-related restrictions — Canada’s own Assisted Human Reproduction Act, enacted that year, banned paying donors for eggs, sperm, embryos and paying surrogates — but the Italian law was particularly severe (and was later mostly overturned). The law, particularly the ban on freezing embryos, quickly reduced IVF success rates, researchers found. But it had another, unintended consequence.
The law did not ban freezing eggs.
“Suddenly, Italian practitioners had a difficult decision: if I maximize this woman’s attempt at having a baby, I need to stimulate her ovaries to make as many eggs as I can, and I’m going to have more than three eggs to fertilize. What am I going to do with the extra?” explains Sauer. “It focused the need to come up with a better method for freezing eggs.”
For the previous half-decade, researchers had been experimenting with vitrification. The technique involves exposing eggs to a series of cryoprotectant solutions in increasingly high doses, then quickly loading them onto a thin storage straw and plunging the straw into a tank of liquid nitrogen, which flash-cools the eggs from room temperature to -196 C in just two to three seconds.
If successful, the word “freezing” isn’t actually accurate, since the technique avoids creating ice crystals that can damage the cell — “vitrification” refers to the transformation of a liquid into a smooth, glass-like solid. The procedure is simple, but must be timed and executed precisely.
Italian scientists flocked to the research, which “sort of fast-tracked egg-freezing,” Sauer says.
“Suddenly,” says Sauer, “there was this new promise.”
Andy Dorfmann co-founded the Genetics and IVF Institute, a fertility centre in Fairfax, Va., in 1984. He saw the birth of his first IVF baby at the Institute in 1985, and, 26 years later, walked her down the aisle on her wedding day. Dorfmann was leading the company’s embryology lab when the research on vitrification began to emerge.
“By the mid-2000s, it was becoming clear that vitrification was probably going to replace (fresh egg donation), or seemed to be at least a very promising thing,” Dorfmann recalls, sitting in a boardroom in the company’s headquarters.
GIVF already ran one of the largest U.S. sperm banks, Fairfax Cryobank, and a large fresh donor egg program. The institute launched a clinical study of egg vitrification in 2006 and opened Fairfax EggBank commercially in 2012, the year the American Society for Reproductive Medicine removed the “experimental” label from egg freezing.
“It has completely transformed ART,” Dorfmann says.
Vitrification has increased survival rates of frozen embryos as well as eggs: over 90 per cent will survive post-thaw, compared to 70 per cent for slow-freezing. With more confidence in the viability of the embryos being transferred to the uterus, there is less need to transfer multiple embryos so that just one will take.
Transferring one high-quality embryo at a time has allowed clinics to improve pregnancy rates while reducing the rate of twins and triplets, says Dorfmann. In Canada, though many factors deserve credit, the IVF multiple birth rate dropped to 10.1 per cent from 29.5 per cent over the last decade.
It “has been a significant boon to the industry medically, in terms of the health of the patients,” says Dorfmann.
Vitrification can make egg donation cheaper — egg bank clients are usually buying a cohort of five to eight frozen eggs, rather than effectively renting an egg donor for as many cycles as it takes — and definitely makes it easier to access.
If no fresh egg donors are available in your small city (or large country that bars paying them for anything beyond expenses), or none that share your ethnicity, egg vitrification means families can still access donated eggs without the cost and trouble of physically bringing the donor and recipient together.
“There’s no syncing people up,” says Joseph Doyle, a reproductive endocrinologist at Shady Grove Fertility. The egg retrieval process is the same, but the risk of the donor’s cycle producing too few eggs, or being cancelled entirely, is transferred to the egg bank. “The eggs are ready, and you can use them very quickly.”
Shady Grove partners with Donor Egg Bank USA, where Wayne Caswell works, in part because they operate on a network model: eggs are retrieved and vitrified at 13 different clinics and distributed to more than 100, including several in Canada.
“There are clinics all over the country, which means broader ethnic variability,” Doyle adds.
Historically, it has been harder for black, Asian and other non-white fertility patients to find egg donors of the same race. Egg banking helps allay that problem.
But discussion of this topic often skirts an uncomfortable truth: non-white couples struggling with infertility are far less likely to use reproductive technologies. A 2014 U.S. National Health Statistics Report found 44.1 per cent of reproductive-age white women with fertility issues had accessed some service for the problem, while only 27.6 per cent of black women had.
Popular debate fixates on “designer babies,” embryos genetically engineered with desirable qualities. Yet traits as simple as eye colour involve a multiplicity of genes, and are more difficult to engineer than many might imagine.
Pre-implantation genetic testing of embryos is increasingly popular, but primarily used to screen for debilitating diseases, not engineer superhumans. A 2015 Chinese experiment that was the first to attempt editing genomes in human embryos, an area of research banned in many countries, tried to replace just one blood-disease causing gene, but failed. Meanwhile, a simple disparity in access to ART results in a form of passive racial engineering that receives far less outcry.
The sheer simplicity of shipping eggs around the world today is probably not what church-minded Italian MPs had envisioned in 2004. While customs can be a problem, the technology is simple: straws of vitrified eggs are simply loaded into a “dry shipper,” a tank with a vacuum wall that can keep contents extremely cold for days, and shipped via courier, as sperm have for decades.
Though a fraction of the ART industry, this mobility has been a major boost for international surrogacy.
“Frozen donor eggs make co-ordination of a multi-stage ART arrangement much easier,” says Susan Crockin, a professor at Georgetown University’s O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law, who has spent her career studying legal issues surrounding reproductive technology.
People who can’t have children without a surrogate — men in same-sex couples, for example — often turn to a shifting landscape of surrogacy hotspots, either because their home countries have banned the practice or because going abroad cuts costs.
As the Star has detailed in its ongoing series, a crush of foreigners compete for Canadian gestational carriers who are supported by our health-care system and theoretically can’t be paid for anything beyond expenses — though payment rules are murky.
Though it’s often called reproductive tourism, Crockin prefers the term reproductive exile.
“There is a biological urge to have children that pushes people to do what they can, and in a country that sets limits, there will always be people who look for a way to accomplish their dreams,” she says. “You take entire populations of your citizenry and you force them to go elsewhere to create families. And when they come back, you have immigration and citizenship problems.”
Media and case law are replete with horror stories. One Canadian couple was stuck in India for more than four years after discovering that one of the twins born to them by an Indian surrogate was not genetically related to either parent, meaning the child did not automatically receive Canadian citizenship.
Egg freezing can’t be blamed. But it is one important area of reproductive medicine where technology has rocketed forward, taking many families with it, while the law lurches to catch up. In late September, Health Canada announced it would “strengthen and clarify the regulatory framework governing assisted human reproduction in Canada.”
While the 2004 Assisted Human Reproduction Act states that egg and sperm donors and surrogates can be reimbursed for eligible expenses but not paid, it never set out what those eligible expenses are. The small pool of altruistic donors and surrogates in Canada operates in a legal grey zone.
But some argue that clarifying these expenses is no improvement. Anything short of legalizing commercial egg donation will continue to send Canadians to the bustling American egg bank business, which can ship vitrified eggs over the border with little difficulty, making a mockery of our domestic ban. Health Canada, which is soliciting public feedback until Nov. 29, hopes to test and track egg and sperm donation better, but it is unclear how the agency hopes to enforce that in the U.S.
One service that did not even exist when Canadian laws were enacted is elective egg freezing.
“Fertility preservation,” as it is sometimes called, became a hot-button issue in 2014 when Apple and Facebook announced they would cover costs for employees. Some observers saw it as benefiting women: more reproductive freedom in a male-dominated industry. Others saw it as avoidance of a greater challenge: integration of work and family life.
What received less attention amid this social debate was the scientific one. The American Society of Reproductive Medicine still does not recommend elective egg freezing.
“Marketing this technology for the purpose of deferring childbearing may give women false hope,” the position statement reads.
Studies that examined the use of fresh versus frozen eggs in IVF have generally found comparable success rates, though researchers say more data is needed.
But it is a mistake to carry those success rates over to the practice of elective egg freezing, which is more likely to be used by women already nearing the ceiling of reproductive age. Critics argue the clinics marketing this service are not always transparent about the likelihood of becoming pregnant later — or how invasive, expensive and psychologically taxing IVF can be.
Nevertheless, this market is booming. Eighty per cent of the 333 egg banking cycles reported in Canada last year were for social reasons.
Shady Grove’s Joseph Doyle believes the social debate around egg freezing is warranted. But he notes that the number of clients asking about elective egg freezing is “growing and growing. There’s absolutely a change there. We really don’t even promote it,” he says.
“The whole field is going to change so much in our lifetimes.”
http://stouffvilleonline.com/2016/11/26/elon-musk-says-teslas-solar-roof-will-cost-less-than/
Elon Musk Says Tesla’s Solar Roof Will Cost Less Than Regular Roofs
Tesla’s solar roofs are expected to hit the market next year and its solar cells will be produced at SolarCity’sGigafactory in Buffalo, NY. Tesla is buying SolarCity stock after it fell about 60% from where it was trading three years ago. “Electricity”, Musk said, “is just a bonus”. SolarCity has recorded losses in six of the last eight quarters. In the words of the Tesla CEO himself, this merger could contribute to “accelerating the world’s transition to sustainable energy”.
Shareholders and analysts also doubted whether taking Tesla into the home solar panel market was wise considering the financial difficulties suffered by the automotive division of the company.
“This is as good of a scenario as we could have imagined”, he said. Electric cars replace vehicles that run on gasoline and diesel fuel.
In terms of what we can expect from the combined company, SolarCity’s rooftop solar offerings will be further integrated with energy storage and promoted to Tesla customers (and vice-versa).
Shareholders of Tesla Motors and SolarCity are scheduled to vote Thursday on whether the luxury electric auto maker should acquire the rooftop solar giant in a $2.23-billion deal.
Speaking after the vote, Musk said that after conversations with SolarCity engineers, “it’s looking quite promising that the solar roof will cost less than a normal roof before you even take the value of electricity into account”.
Musk said in the shareholder meeting that people should be going after solar roofs in the future as they look better than traditional roofs, cost less, generate electricity, and are also more durable. Musk asked. “Why would you get anything else?”
But Musk convinced shareholders that the deal was, as he originally stated, ‘a no-brainer’.
The deal will be an all-stock transaction, with SolarCity shareholders receiving 0.11 Tesla share for each SolarCityshare they own.
Thursday will be an important day for Tesla Motors (NASDAQ:TSLA) and SolarCity (NASDAQ:SCTY).
Investors also raised concerns about the close ties between the two companies.
http://www.kurzweilai.net/battery-breakthrough-charges-in-seconds-lasts-for-a-week
Battery breakthrough charges in seconds, lasts for a week
November 26, 2016
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Illustration representing the novel design of a hybrid supercapacitor, showing bundles of nanowires (blue) coated with 2D energy-storage materials (yellow) (credit: University of Central Florida)
University of Central Florida researchers have developed a radical new supercapacitor design that could one day replace lithium-ion batteries, allowing users to charge a mobile phone in a few seconds and with a charge that lasts a week, according to the researchers. The new battery would be flexible and a fraction of the size of a lithium-ion battery.
The proof-of-concept design is based on a hybrid supercapacitor composed of a core with millions of highly conductive nanowires coated with shells of two-dimensional materials.* It combines fast charging and discharging (high power density) and high storage capacity (high energy density).
Supercapacitor design: an array of electrically conductive nanowires (orange) with metal current-collector covering (blue) (credit: Nitin Choudhary et al./ACS Nano)
Optical image of core/shell nanowires on a tungsten foil under mechanical bending (left). Corresponding SEM image (right) shows high-density, well-aligned nanowires along with their faceted surface (inset). The scale bar in the inset is 500 nm. (credit: Nitin Choudhary et al./ACS Nano)
Another advantage would be “cyclic stability” (how many times a battery can be charged, drained and recharged before beginning to degrade). A lithium-ion battery can be recharged fewer than 1,500 times without significant failure, compared to recently developed supercapacitors based on two-dimensional materials, which can be recharged more than 30,000 times.
Supercapacitor prototype showing flexible design (credit: (credit: University of Central Florida)
Electric vehicles could also benefit from longer-range operation and sudden bursts of power and speed. The flexible material could mean a significant advancement in wearable tech, according to the researchers, and would also avoid the risk of overheating and explosion with lithium-ion batteries.
Hee-Suk Chung of Korea Basic Science Institute was also involved in the research, which was published recently in the journal ACS Nano.
* The core nanowire material is tungsten trioxide (WO3) and the two-dimensional shell material is a transition-metal dichalcogenide, tungsten disulfide (WS2).
Abstract of High-Performance One-Body Core/Shell Nanowire Supercapacitor Enabled by Conformal Growth of Capacitive 2D WS2 Layers
Two-dimensional (2D) transition-metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) have emerged as promising capacitive materials for supercapacitor devices owing to their intrinsically layered structure and large surface areas. Hierarchically integrating 2D TMDs with other functional nanomaterials has recently been pursued to improve electrochemical performances; however, it often suffers from limited cyclic stabilities and capacitance losses due to the poor structural integrity at the interfaces of randomly assembled materials. Here, we report high-performance core/shell nanowire supercapacitors based on an array of one-dimensional (1D) nanowires seamlessly integrated with conformal 2D TMD layers. The 1D and 2D supercapacitor components possess “one-body” geometry with atomically sharp and structurally robust core/shell interfaces, as they were spontaneously converted from identical metal current collectors via sequential oxidation/sulfurization. These hybrid supercapacitors outperform previously developed any stand-alone 2D TMD-based supercapacitors; particularly, exhibiting an exceptional charge–discharge retention over 30,000 cycles owing to their structural robustness, suggesting great potential for unconventional energy storage technologies.
http://www.tribuneindia.com/news/health/story/328768.html
Human cells with ‘built-in circuit’ to help stop cancer growth
Scientists have engineered cells with a ‘built-in genetic circuit’ that produces a molecule that inhibits the ability of tumours to survive and grow in their low oxygen environment.
The genetic circuit produces the machinery necessary for the production of a compound that inhibits a protein that has a significant and critical role in the growth and survival of cancer cells.
This results in the cancer cells being unable to survive in the low oxygen, low nutrient tumour microenvironment.
As tumours develop and grow, they rapidly outstrip the supply of oxygen delivered by existing blood vessels. This results in cancer cells needing to adapt to low oxygen environment.
To enable them to survive and grow in the low-oxygen or ‘hypoxic’ environments, tumours contain increased levels of a protein called Hypoxia-inducible factor 1 (HIF-1).
HIF-1 senses reduced oxygen levels and triggers many changes in cellular function, including a changed metabolism and sending signals for the formation of new blood vessels.
It is thought that tumours primarily hijack the function of this protein (HIF-1) to survival and grow.
“In an effort to better understand the role of HIF-1 in cancer, and to demonstrate the potential for inhibiting this protein in cancer therapy, we engineered a human cell line with an additional genetic circuit that produces the HIF-1 inhibiting molecule when placed in a hypoxic environment,” said Ali Tavassoli, professor at the University of Southampton in the UK.
“We’ve been able to show that the engineered cells produce the HIF-1 inhibitor, and this molecule goes on to inhibit HIF-1 function in cells, limiting the ability of these cells to survive and grow in a nutrient-limited environment as expected,” said Tavassoli.
“In a wider sense, we have given these engineered cells the ability to fight back — to stop a key protein from functioning in cancer cells,” he said. “This opens up the possibility for the production and use of sentinel circuits, which produce other bioactive compounds in response to environmental or cellular changes, to target a range of diseases including cancer.”
The genetic circuit is incorporated onto the chromosome of a human cell line, which encodes the protein machinery needed for the production of their cyclic peptide HIF-1 inhibitor.
The production of the HIF-1 inhibitor occurs in response to hypoxia in these cells. The research team demonstrated that even when produced directly in cells, this molecule still prevents the HIF-1 signalling and the associated adaptation to hypoxia in these cells.
“The main application for this work is that it eliminates the need for the synthesis of our inhibitor, so that biologists conducting research into HIF function can easily access our molecule and hopefully discover more about the role of HIF-1 in cancer,” said Tavassoli.
The study was published in the journal ACS Synthetic Biology. — PTI
http://www.techtimes.com/articles/186971/20161125/asus-zenfone-3-skipping-the-us-zenfone-3-deluxe-canada-release-canceled.htm
Asus ZenFone 3 Skipping The US, ZenFone 3 Deluxe Canada Release
The standard Asus ZenFone 3 is reportedly not coming to the United States, while the higher-end ZenFone 3 Deluxe will no longer be launching in Canada.
Meanwhile, the ZenFone 3 Deluxe is available in the United States, while the standard ZenFone 3 is available in Canada.
ZenFone 3 US Release Not Happening
The Asus ZenFone 3 Deluxe and the Zenfone 3 Laser became available for purchase in the United States through Amazon back in September, but the standard ZenFone 3 was nowhere to be found. Asus started selling the ZenFone 3 Deluxe, ZenWatch 3 and ZenPad 3s 10 through its own store back in October, with the standard ZenFone 3 version still MIA.
The ZenFone 3 Deluxe (ZS570KL) is undoubtedly a sleek powerhouse and was the first smartphone to rock the Snapdragon 821 processor, but higher-end specs also mean a higher price compared to the standard ZenFone 3.
Those interested in buying the cheaper ZenFone 3 in the United States, however, are apparently out of luck as Asus has confirmed to MobileSyrup that this particular variant will not make its debut stateside.
As a reminder, the standard ZenFone 3 has a 5.5-inch full HD IPS display, a Snapdragon 625 processor, 3 GB or 4 GB of RAM (depending on version), a 16-megapixel rear camera, an 8-megapixel front shooter and a 3,000 mAh battery, among the highlights.
ZenFone 3 Deluxe Canada Release Canceled
One the other side of the border, Canadians waiting for the ZenFone 3 Deluxe are also in for some bad news.
Asus had previously said that its ZenFone 3 Deluxe would become available in Canada in early November, launching at CAD$699 at Best Buy, Newegg.ca, Canada Computers, Memory Express and Staples. That obviously did not happen since we’re now in late November already, and it now looks like the company had a change of heart and scraped the Canadian launch altogether.
Asus representatives reportedly told MobileSyrup that the planned Canadian release of the ZenFone 3 Deluxe has been canceled, but did not offer any details as to why the company made this decision.
If this proves to be accurate, Asus fans in Canada will have to settle for the standard ZenFone 3, which launched in the country back in September at a CAD$429.99 price point.
Asus has yet to confirm whether the standard ZenFone 3 will indeed skip the United States, or whether the ZenFone 3 Deluxe Canadian release was indeed canceled. As always, we’ll keep you up to date as soon as more information hits the surface.
http://www.valuewalk.com/2016/11/apple-products-for-2017/
iPhone 8, iPad Air 3, Apple Watch 3, Glasses: Apple Products For 2017
2017 promises to be an exciting year for Apple, with several products in the pipeline. So without further ado, here is a rundown on the most exciting Appledevices that may see the light of day over the next 12 months.
iPhone 8
The iPhone range is always a highlight of any calendar year, but this should be particularly true in 2017 when the iPhone 8 emerges. This smartphone willmark the tenth anniversary of the Apple smartphone series, and thus the consumer electronics giant is expected to pack the device with some impressivespecs and features.
Expect a new design, improved screen resolution and camera functionality, along with some surprises.
iPad Air 3
The iPad Air 3 is probably the most anticipated tablet to be released by Apple in 2017. Reports suggest that this will emerge in the first quarter of thecalendar year, possibly in March. Early rumors relating to this template suggest that it will feature a new Apple Pencil, while a 4K resolution display has alsobeen linked with the iPad Air 3. This could also come equipped with 3D Touch technology, making it more user-friendly.
16 GB and 32 GB storage versions are anticipated, with the expected price tag of the iPad Air 3 in the $600 ballpark. There has been no official statementon the iPad Air 3 as of yet, but the existence of the tablet is considered to be a poorly kept secret.
Apple Watch Series 3
Apple continues to work on establishing its Apple Watch as a mainstream device, and with this in mind the Apple Watch Series 3 may well arrive in 2017.This cannot be considered an absolute certainty, considering Apple only released the second version of it smartwatch just last year. But reports havealready indicated that the Californian company is considering releasing the third iteration of the Apple Watch in September.
The Apple Watch 3 will retain popular features from the device released last year, such as the Global Positioning System, dual-core processor and waterresistance. A range of new models, colous and the straps will also be made available, and it has been suggested that the FaceTime camera for video callsand selfies will finally emerge. Micro-LED panels will also ensure that the display is brighter than previous versions.
AirPods
In some respects a relatively minor hardware release, nonetheless many Apple fans are still eagerly awaiting the emergence of AirPods. This earphonesystem will reportedly deliver convenience, outstanding quality and longer battery life when it is finally released, with the release date possibly in January ofnext year.
One of the interesting innovations also being linked with AirPods is the ability of the device to turn on and stay connected after a single tap. Anotheroutstanding feature is the Apple W1 chip, which produces extremely efficient wireless for better connection and improved sound.The Apple AirPods will retail at around $159.
iPad Pro 2
The iPad Pro 2 will probably arrive in 2017, with a significant discount over previous models. Reports have suggested that Apple will provide three modelsat launch, with 9.7-inch and 10-inch versions accompanied by the largest 12.9-inch tablet.
There could also be a bezel-free version of the iPad Pro 2, as Apple is continually linked with producing such edge-to-edge displays. Leaked images alsosuggest that the tablet will feature 128GB of storage when released.
Expected in March 2017, this will be the premium Apple tablet, and will follow on from the success of previous releases.
Mac Pro
The Apple Mac Pro has not been updated since it was originally announced at the Worldwide Developers Conference back in June 2013. While this willnever be a mainstream device, this must nonetheless be somewhat concerning for Apple, considering the existing release is beginning to look rather datedfor a state of the art computer.
But code located in the Mac OS X El Capitan OS suggests that a new version of the Mac Pro will arrive in the foreseeable future. This would be one of themore unexpected updates in the Apple product range, as some have suggested that the Mac Pro is commercially untenable.
MacBook Air
The MacBook Air was updated in 2016, but considering the iconic nature of this Apple laptop, this update was rather tentative and disappointing. It isexpected that Apple will once again upgrade the MacBook Air in 2017, with an improved Retina display, USB-C support, and the inclusion of Touch ID andForce Touch all anticipated.
Apple continues to dominate the laptop marketplace, with the MacBook considerably more recognizable and widely utilized than the Microsoft Surface pro,but it is in no position to rest on its laurels in this niche.
Apple Glasses
Rumors abound that Apple is working on a virtual or augmented reality device, with these suggestions dating back at least 12 months. There have been fewexplicit details about this device, and it could be that eventually Apple will release a conventional virtual reality headset. This would be logical consideringthe increasing the profile of VR following the release of the PlayStation VR system, to compete with the existing Oculus Rift.
However, it has also been suggested that Apple has been working on an Apple Glasses system, similar to the Glass device released by Google previously.With the likes of Microsoft and Facebook also involved in virtual and augmented reality, it seems a certainty that Apple will get on board with this market inthe near future.
Apple Car
Finally, there have been persistent rumors of the so-called Apple Car since February 2015 at least, with many believing that the consumer electronicsbehemoth will eventually release an electric vehicle. While next year is far too early for this vehicle to emerge, it could be that Apple will finally let the cat outof the bag with regard to this project, whether deliberately or inadvertently.
http://hackaday.com/2016/11/26/the-most-flexible-synthesizer-is-diy-raspberry-pi/
THE MOST FLEXIBLE SYNTHESIZER IS DIY, RASPBERRY PI
[Ivan Franco] sent us this great synthesizer project that he’s working on. Or maybe it’s more like a synthesizermeta-project: a synthesizer construction set. You see, what Pryth has is a Raspberry Pi inside that’s running acustom distribution that includes SuperCollider to generate the sound, OSC for the communication layer, and aTeensy with up to 80 (!) multiplexed analog inputs that you’ll connect up to whatever hardware you desire.
With the computer inside the box — the Raspberry Pi in question — you can easily make this system into astandalone musical instrument, without tethering it to your laptop. Or you can tether it, and using a web interfacethat’s hosted on the Pi, write new SuperCollider programs for your instrument, changing the way it behaves. Andof course, if you’re already a SuperCollider or Raspberry Pi expert, you can work on the Pi directly.
The system is brand new, but check out the Mitt synth device that [Ivan] already made, with a video embeddedbelow. It’s a good overview of one of the possible hardware configurations, and a sweet demo of a coupleSuperCollider routines.
[Ivan] is trying to create an interesting and easy-to-use empty vessel for you to pour your hardware and softwaresynthesizer dreams into. Everything is open source, and aside from the Pi and the price of potentiometers, this is adirt-cheap device. You’re not going to be limited by SuperCollider, and we’re guessing that you’re not going to belimited by 80 inputs either. What’s the craziest sound-maker you can think of?Posted in musical hacks
http://www.cantechletter.com/2016/11/new-electric-vehicle-noise-requirements-cheered-advocates-blind/
New electric vehicle noise requirements cheered by advocates for the blind
Are hybrid vehicles doing their job a little too well? Safety regulators seem to think so.
On Thursday, the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) released a final ruling that will require automobile manufacturers to install devices in their electric and hybrid vehicles that make the cars produce more noise, in response to concerns over pedestrian safety.
“The full implementation of the Pedestrian Safety Enhancement Act of 2010 will protect all pedestrians, especially the blind, as well as cyclists. This regulation will ensure that blind Americans can continue to travel safely and independently as we work, learn, shop, and engage in all facets of community life,” said Mark A. Riccobono, president of the National Federation of the Blind.
The NHTSA predicts that the addition of the noise making device will see around 2400 fewer accidents between cyclists/pedestrians and smart/hybrid cars. Devices must be implemented on all new vehicles by no later than September 1, 2019. The Ruling says only vehicles weighing less than 10,000 pounds will have to produce more noise, and only produce noise when vehicles are traveling in forward or reverse speeds less than 30 Km/h and not over due to the noise that tires and wind produce.
The move comes as the percentage of non-combustion engine vehicles seems set to rise sharply. Recent research from Bloomberg New Energy Finance predicts that by the year 2040, electric vehicles (EVs) will count for 35% of total global car sales, and due to the quick advancements in battery technology they will become cheaper than conventional vehicles by the year 2025. If proven to be true, this will mean that 13 million less barrels of crude oil will be used per day, but will increase daily electricity use by 2,700TWh (that’s 2,700,000,000,000,000) which is just over 10% of the global demand in 2015.
Canadians have been concerned with the dangers associated with EVs being nearly silent for since as early as July of 2008. When fully electric vehicles were first being legalized for road use in the quiet municipality of Oak Bay B.C., some were thrilled because of the steps being take to help the environment, while others were worried about the distinct and possible threat to their blind community members.
Instead of proposing to ban these vehicles the Canadian Federation of the Blind worked hand in hand with its American counter part to have the vehicles be made noisier whilst idling, accelerating, and slowing down.
“If they are so quiet we can’t hear them, then no sane blind person is going to want to be out on the street alone. And that would make us virtual prisoners in our own homes,” said Canadian Federation of the Blind vice president Mary Ellen Gabias, to CBC News in 2008. She also went on to say that this change will not only benefit those who are visually impaired “A couple of months ago, an eight-year-old was hit by a Prius, He didn’t hear it coming,”
http://hackaday.com/2016/11/25/raspberry-pi-radio-makes-the-sweet-music-of-bacteria/
RASPBERRY PI RADIO MAKES THE SWEET MUSIC OF BACTERIA
We’ve noticed a lot of musical groups are named after insects. Probably has something to do with the Beatles. (If you study that for a while you’ll spot the homophonic pun, and yes we know that the Crickets inspired the name.) There’s also Iron Butterfly, Adam Ant, and quite a few more. A recent art project by a Mexican team — Micro-ritmos — might inspire some musical groups to be named after bacteria.
The group used geobacter — a kind of bacteria found in soil — a Raspberry Pi, an Arduino, and a camera to build an interesting device. As it looks at the bacteria and uses SuperCollider to create music and lighting from the patterns. You can see a video of Micro-ritmos, below.
Music is a bit subjective, of course. We thought the music sounded a little oppressive. Not sure how much of that is the code and how much is the characteristics of the bacteria itself.
We’ve seen SuperCollider in a banana piano, before (these are popular because for most people bananas have appeal). We’ve also seen other natural processes generating sound like this project for presenting the sunset to the blind.
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