(NewsNation) — A new study claims to have found chemical compounds that can actually reverse the effects of aging, though so far results have been limited to animal studies.
Harvard Medical School, University of Maine and Massachusetts Institute of Technology scientists collaborated on the study, published in the journal Aging. Researchers found it was possible to reverse cellular engineering rather than simply delay it.
They used six chemical compounds to reverse aging in cells, returning them to a youthful state without having them revert too far and become cancerous.
Sir Frederick Banting was clearly ahead of his time. He is also an inspiration for a new open source self-administering drug delivery device. Long before open source was an option or even a concept, the now-celebrated former Western lecturer refused to patent insulin because he wanted it to be inexpensive and widely available for the betterment of all.
Now, 100 years after Banting won the Nobel Prize for his discovery, Western researchers are at it again. A team led by engineering and Ivey Business School professor Joshua Pearce has developed a new 3D printed, completely open-source autoinjector —a device designed to deliver a single dose of medicine—for a tenth of the cost of a commercially purchased product.
A new study, published July 14 in the journal PLOS One, describes the manufacturing design of the spring-driven device, which could cost less than $7 to make while a store-bought version is closer to $70.
In a pioneering study, researchers from Harvard Medical School, University of Maine, and MIT
MIT is an acronym for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It is a prestigious private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts that was founded in 1861. It is organized into five Schools: architecture and planning; engineering; humanities, arts, and social sciences; management; and science. MIT’s impact includes many scientific breakthroughs and technological advances. Their stated goal is to make a better world through education, research, and innovation.
Imagine a wearable patch that tracks your vital signs through changes in the color display, or shipping labels that light up to indicate changes in temperature or sterility of food items.
These are among the potential uses for a new flexible display created by UBC researchers and announced recently in ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces.
“This device is capable of fast, realtime and reversible color change,” says researcher Claire Preston, who developed the device as part of her master’s in electrical and computer engineering at UBC. “It can stretch up to 30 percent without losing performance. It uses a color-changing technology that can be used for visual monitoring. And it is relatively cheap to manufacture.”
For many, the word “crystals” conjures images of shimmering suncatchers that create a prism of rainbow colors or semi-transparent stones thought to possess healing abilities. But in the realm of science and engineering, crystals take on a more technical definition. They’re perceived as materials whose components – be it atoms, molecules, or nanoparticles –are arranged regularly in space. In other words, crystals are defined by the regular arrangement of their constituents. Familiar examples include diamonds, table salt, and sugar cubes.
When Nicola Spaldin began studying natural sciences at the University of Cambridge in 1988, she planned on becoming a physicist, but then quickly reconsidered. “After about the second lecture I completely changed my mind,” she recalls. “I thought ‘I’m absolutely not clever enough to be a physicist.’ Everybody was very brilliant and I was not.”
Yet it seems Spaldin was vastly underestimating herself. Now a professor of materials science at ETH Zurich, she won two major awards for physics last year: the EPS Europhysics Prize and the Hamburg Prize for Theoretical Physics. Both accolades cited Spaldin’s pioneering work on the theory of magnetoelectric multiferroics – materials that are both ferromagnetic and ferroelectric. These properties are rarely found together, making it very difficult to engineer substances with both, but they have many exciting potential applications, from microelectronics to medicine.
Developing Novel DNA-Based Mechano-Technologies For Human Health — Dr. Khalid Salaita, Ph.D. — Emory University
Dr. Khalid Salaita, Ph.D. (https://www.salaitalab.com/salaita) is a Professor of Chemistry at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia (USA), program faculty in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory, program member of Cancer Cell Biology at Winship Cancer Institute, and most recently is the recent winner Future Insight Prize given by Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany (https://www.emdgroup.com/en/research/open-innovation/futurei…aming.html) for his cutting edge work in the area of mechanobiology.
Dr. Salaita earned his B.S. in Chemistry, from Old Dominion University, his Ph.D. in Chemistry from Northwestern University, completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley, and then started his own lab at Emory University, investigating the interface between living systems and engineered nanoscale materials. To achieve this goal, his group has pioneered the development of tools like molecular force sensors, DNA mechano-technology, smart therapeutics, and nanoscale mechanical actuators to help manipulate living cells.
Researchers in the Andrew and Erna Viterbi Faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering have demonstrated control over an emerging material, which they consider as a possible future alternative to silicon in microelectronics. This is a timely development, because scientists and engineers face challenges in continuing the transistor shrinking trend, an important driver of computer chip performance.
The continuous performance improvement of these chips has been driven by shrinking the size of the most basic logic “Lego” piece – the transistor. Transistors are miniature switches that control the flow of electric currents, analogous to a faucet controlling the flow of water. Already in the early 1960s, Gordon Moore, the founder of Intel, proposed that the transistors’ miniaturization rate should allow doubling of the number of transistors per area every 2 years.
Stevens’ School of Systems and Enterprises (SSE) held a reception at Northrop Grumman’s Space Systems headquarters in Dulles, Va., to congratulate its 21 employees who received their Master of Engineering in Space Systems Engineering through the SSE Corporate Education program.
SSE’s Dr. Wiley Larson was able to congratulate the cohort of graduates, and Marcos Stephens, director, technical staff development for NGC Space Systems, served as the program emcee. Stephens and Carol Ruiz, director, online and corporate engagement for SSE, planned the event with the assistance of Julie Godby, executive assistant at NGC. The School of Systems and Enterprises has partnered with Northrup Grumman since 2006 and is excited to be engaged with their Space Systems segment.
This benefits customers by accelerating access to future vehicles that feature the latest technology while also enabling their current vehicles to be eligible to receive updates and improvements over time—unlocking additional value beyond the initial point of purchase. And for large enterprises, shorter development cycles with less ground-up engineering can equate to significant cost savings and allow more investment in innovation.
Beyond vehicles themselves, the tools, techniques and processes that are required to engineer and manufacture at scale are also benefitting from developments in the latest hardware technology. Advancements in raw material chemistry and processing, fabrication and physical sciences are leading to lighter, stronger and better-performing vehicle applications in parallel with greater connectivity.
As advancements in transportation technology continue to evolve, it’s important for companies to balance their focus on the continual development of both hardware and software technologies. Forgoing advancements in one without investing in the development of the other can lead to significant risks and missed opportunities for long-term success.
