CWL

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Plastic in Implantable Medical Devices is Not Suitable

Scientists have discovered a previously unrecognized way that degradation can occur in silicone-urethane plastics that are often considered for use in medical devices. Their study, published in ACS’ journal Macromolecules, could have implications for device manufacturers considering use of these plastics in the design of some implantable devices, including cardiac defibrillation leads.

Kimberly Chaffin, Marc Hillmyer, Frank Bates, from the Univ. of Minnesota, and colleagues explain that some implanted biomedical devices, such as pacemakers and defibrillators, have parts made of a plastic consisting of polyurethane and silicone. While these materials have been extensively studied for failure due to interaction with oxygen, no published study has looked at interaction with water as a potential failure mechanism in this class of materials.

Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2012/12/plastic-implantable-medical-devices-not-suitable

More stem cells plz.

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Fungus Has Cancer-Fighting Power

Arthrobotrys oligospora doesn’t live a charmed life; it survives on a diet of roundworm.

But a discovery by a team led by Mingjun Zhang, an associate professor of biomedical engineering at the Univ. of Tennessee, Knoxville, could give the fungus’s life more purpose—as a cancer fighter. Zhang and his team have discovered that nanoparticles produced by A. oligospora hold promise for stimulating the immune system and killing tumors.

Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2012/12/fungus-has-cancer-fighting-power

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Oil and Water May Work Together After All

Water transforms into a previously unknown structure in between a liquid and a vapor when in contact with alcohol molecules containing long oily chains, according to Purdue Univ. researchers. However, around short oily chains, water is more ice-like.

Water plays a huge role in biological processes, from protein folding to membrane formation, and it could be that this transformation is useful in a way not yet understood, says Dor Ben-Amotz, the professor of chemistry who led the research. Ben-Amotz’s research team found that as they examined alcohols with increasingly long carbon chains, the transformation occurred at lower and lower temperatures.

Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2012/12/oil-and-water-may-work-together-after-all

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Watermelon Genome Unlocks Tastier, More Nutritious Fruit

Are juicier, sweeter and more disease-resistant watermelons on the way? An international consortium of more than 60 scientists from the U.S., China, and Europe has published the genome sequence of watermelon (Citrullus lanatus) — information that could dramatically accelerate watermelon breeding toward production of a more nutritious, tastier and more resistant fruit. The watermelon genome sequence was published in the online version of the journal Nature Genetics.

The researchers discovered that a large portion of disease resistance genes were lost in the domestication of watermelon. With the high-quality watermelon sequence now complete, it is hoped that breeders can now use the information to recover some of these natural disease defenses.

Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2012/11/watermelon-genome-unlocks-tastier-more-nutritious-fruit

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New Metamaterial Lens Focuses Radio Waves

In many respects, metamaterials are supernatural. These manmade materials, with their intricately designed structures, bend electromagnetic waves in ways that are impossible for materials found in nature. Scientists are investigating metamaterials for their potential to engineer invisibility cloaks — materials that refract light to hide an object in plain sight — and “super lenses,” which focus light beyond the range of optical microscopes to image objects at nanoscale detail.

Researchers at MIT have now fabricated a three-dimensional, lightweight metamaterial lens that focuses radio waves with extreme precision. The concave lens exhibits a property called negative refraction, bending electromagnetic waves — in this case, radio waves — in exactly the opposite sense from which a normal concave lens would work.

Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2012/11/new-metamaterial-lens-focuses-radio-waves

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Nanofibrillar Cellulose Film Platform Aids Medical Tests

Researchers at Aalto Univ. have succeeded in developing a durable and affordable nanofibrillar cellulose film platform to support medical testing. New environmentally friendly, reliable nanofibrillar cellulose (NFC) platforms are more diverse than plastic films.

New film can be made, for instance, hydrophobic, hydrophilic and the electric charge can be changed. This will enhance the possibility of conducting thousands of different medical tests at home or in physicians’ receptions instead of waiting for results from laboratories.

Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2012/10/nanofibrillar-cellulose-film-platform-aids-medical-tests

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Brain’s Language Center Has Several Roles

A century and a half ago, French physician Pierre Paul Broca found that patients with damage to part of the brain’s frontal lobe were unable to speak more than a few words. Later dubbed Broca’s area, this region is believed to be critical for speech production and some aspects of language comprehension.

However, in recent years neuroscientists have observed activity in Broca’s area when people perform cognitive tasks that have nothing to do with language, such as solving math problems or holding information in working memory. Those findings have stimulated debate over whether Broca’s area is specific to language or plays a more general role in cognition.

Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2012/10/brains-language-center-has-several-roles

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Device Measures 768 Biomolecular Interactions Simultaneously

Scientists at EPFL and the Univ. of Geneva have developed a microfluidic device smaller than a domino that can simultaneously measure up to 768 biomolecular interactions. Inside our cells, molecules are constantly binding and separating from one another. It’s this game of constant flux that drives gene expression asides essentially every other biological process.

Understanding the specific details of how these interactions take place is thus crucial to our overall understanding of the fundamental mechanisms of living organisms. There are millions of possible combinations of molecules, however; determining all of them would be a Herculean task. Various tools have been developed to measure the degree of affinity between a strand of DNA and its transcription factor. They provide an indication of the strength of the affinity between them.

Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2012/09/device-measures-768-biomolecular-interactions-simultaneously

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Allowing Errors Makes Chip More Powerful, Efficient

Researchers have unveiled an “inexact” computer chip that challenges the industry’s 50-year pursuit of accuracy. The design improves power and resource efficiency by allowing for occasional errors. Prototypes unveiled this week at the ACM International Conference on Computing Frontiers in Cagliari, Italy, are at least 15 times more efficient than today’s technology.

The research, which earned best-paper honors at the conference, was conducted by experts from Rice Univ., Singapore’s Nanyang Technological Univ. (NTU), Switzerland’s Center for Electronics and Microtechnology (CSEM) and the Univ. of California, Berkeley.

Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news-Allowing-Errors-Makes-Chip-More-Powerful-Efficient-051712.aspx

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New Resources Offer Clues About Medical Potential of Plants

Scientists at Purdue Univ. and eight other institutions have developed new resources poised to unlock another door in the hidden garden of medicinally important compounds found in plants. The resources were developed by the Medicinal Plant Consortium, led by the Univ. of Kentucky College of Agriculture. They grew out of a $6 million initiative from the National Institutes of Health to study how the genes of plants contribute to production of various chemical compounds, some of which are medicinally important.

Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news-Research-Explores-Medical-Potential-of-Plants-121611.aspx

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U.S. Electric Grid Could Handle New Technologies

Over the next two decades, the U.S. electric grid will face unprecedented technological challenges stemming from the growth of distributed and intermittent new energy sources such as solar and wind power, as well as an expected influx of electric and hybrid vehicles that require frequent recharging. But a new MIT study concludes that—as long as some specific policy changes are made—the grid is most likely up to the challenge.

Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news-US-Electric-Grid-Could-Handle-New-Technologies-120611.aspx

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Gray Matter Linked to Decision-Making Process

The more gray matter you have in the decision-making, thought-processing part of your brain, the better your ability to evaluate rewards and consequences. That may seem like an obvious conclusion, but a new study conducted at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory is the first to show this link between structure and function in healthy people—and the impairment of both structure and function in people addicted to cocaine. The study appears in the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.

Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news-Gray-Matter-Linked-to-Decision-Making-Process-112611.aspx