The Key to Mass-producing Nanomaterials

NNanoparticles form in a 3-D-printed microfluidic channel. Each droplet shown here is about 250 micrometers in diameter, and contains billions of platinum nanoparticles. CPhoto: Richard Brutchey and Noah Malmstadt, USC
Nanoparticles form in a 3-D-printed microfluidic channel. Each droplet shown here is about 250 micrometers in diameter, and contains billions of platinum nanoparticles. CPhoto: Richard Brutchey and Noah Malmstadt, USC
anoparticles can be found in everything from drug delivery formulations to pollution controls on cars to HD TV sets. With special properties derived from their tiny size and subsequently increased surface area, they're critical to industry and scientific research.

They're also expensive and tricky to make.

Now, researchers at USC have created a new way to manufacture nanoparticles that will transform the process from a painstaking, batch-by-batch drudgery into a large-scale, automated assembly line.

Bacteria Take 'RNA Mug Shots' of Threatening Viruses

Scientists from The University of Texas at Austin, the Stanford University School of Medicine and two other institutions have discovered that bacteria have a system that can recognize and disrupt dangerous viruses using a newly identified mechanism involving ribonucleic acid (RNA). It is similar to the CRISPR/Cas system that captures foreign DNA. The discovery might lead to better ways to thwart viruses that kill agricultural crops and interfere with the production of dairy products such as cheese and yogurt.

The research appears online Feb. 25 in the journal Science.

Both RNA and DNA are critical for life. In humans and many other organisms, DNA molecules act as the body's blueprints, while RNA molecules act as the construction crew—reading the blueprints, building the body and maintaining the functions of life.

Experimental Ebola Antibody Protects Monkeys

Scientists at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, and colleagues have discovered that a single monoclonal antibody—a protein that attacks viruses—isolated from a human Ebola virus disease survivor protected non-human primates when given as late as five days after lethal Ebola infection.

The antibody can now advance to testing in humans as a potential treatment for Ebola virus disease. There are currently no licensed treatments for Ebola infection, which caused more than 11,000 deaths in the 2014-2015 outbreak in West Africa. The findings are described in two articles to be published online by Science on February 25.

Iceland to Stop Hunting Whales

Good news for wildlife activists across the globe—one of the world’s last whaling companies has decided to pull the plug on its annual whale hunt this summer, because of its difficulty to market the meat.

Iceland’s Hvalur company, which has killed 155 fin whales in the waters of far North in 2015, has told Icelandic press Morgunbladid on Wednesday that Japan, its main market for fin whale, has insisted that the meat pass a full chemical analysis before going on market.

According to Hvalur’s CEO Kristjan Loftsson, Japan’s methods of testing whale meat are outdated and make it too difficult to market his products. Norway faced similar issues last year, when Japan found that the country’s whale meat violated health standards, according to Vice News.

11,000-Year-Old Engraved Pendant is Britain’s Earliest Known Mesolithic Art

When Prof. Nicky Milner, of the Univ. of York’s Dept. of Archaeology, was 15-years-old, she went on an Anglo Saxon excavation. The trip was only supposed to last three days, but the budding archaeologist ended up staying for six weeks.

“The fact that you can touch things that have been in the ground for thousands of years thrilled me,” she told R&D Magazine of her early interest in archaeology.

But five miles away from where Milner grew up sat a treasure trove of archaeological goodies. Located in North Yorkshire, the Star Carr site was famously excavated by Grahame Clark between 1949 and 1951, and changed archeologists’ understanding of people from the Mesolithic Period. The earliest known house in Britain, the oldest evidence of carpentry in Europe, and headdresses made from red deer skulls and antlers (possibly worn by shamans who communed with the animal spirit world), all were found at the site.

“People here were not passing by—they were building structures and making their homes around the edge of the lake,” said Milner, noting that these ancient people weren’t the typical nomadic hunter-gatherers.

Transparency is Key to Open Innovation

In order to compete and win in today’s global marketplace, innovation-driven companies have to find ways to create and develop products and services faster than ever before. Going outside their own four walls to source ideas and solutions in order to expedite the time-to-market cycle — commonly known as open innovation (OI) — has become a widely accepted and applied strategy for companies ranging from global chemical producers and automotive giants, to bioengineering and pharmaceutical companies, sports equipment, consumer and packaged goods makers – even state governments and the National Football League.

In the past, many organizations used open innovation as a “fix” when their R&D bench hit a roadblock or ran out of time.  Or there may have been a lone ranger in the department that went outside to source solutions - but only for his or her particular product line.  These situations required a modicum of transparency.  The seeking organization had to share enough detail about the desired solution to generate high-quality submissions from outside engineers, technologists, inventors, and research laboratories.

Genetic Tree Research Sheds New Light on Disease Outbreaks

Scientists have a new tool for unraveling the mysteries of how diseases such as HIV move through a population, thanks to insights into phylogenetics, the creation of an organism's genetic tree and evolutionary relationships.

"It turns out that three different types of transmission histories are possible between two persons who might have infected each other," said Thomas Leitner of Los Alamos National Laboratory, the corresponding author of a new paper out this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "Using phylogenetic inference in the epidemiological investigations of HIV transmission, we've determined that between two sampled, potentially epidemiologically linked persons, we can now evaluate the possibility that an unsampled intermediary or common source existed, even without a sample from that individual."

Like a detective inferring the existence of an unseen actor in a sequence of events, the Los Alamos team used computational phylogenetic analysis to examine how strains of HIV, both in computer modeling and compared with real-life case studies, would be transmitted.