3-D Images of representative biological cells taken with the HT-1Researchers have developed a powerful method for 3D imaging of live cells without staining.
Professor YongKeun Park of the Physics Department at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) is a leading researcher in the field of biophotonics and has dedicated much of his research career to working on digital holographic microscopy technology. Park and his research team collaborated with the R&D team of a start-up that Park co-founded to develop a state-of-the-art, 2D/3D/4D holographic microscope that would allow a real-time label-free visualization of biological cells and tissues.
The HT is an optical analogy of X-ray computed tomography (CT). Both X-ray CT and HT share the same physical principle—the inverse of wave scattering. The difference is that HT uses laser illumination, whereas X-ray CT uses X-ray beams. From the measurement of multiple 2D holograms of a cell, coupled with various angles of laser illuminations, the 3-D refractive index (RI) distribution of the cell can be reconstructed. The reconstructed 3D RI map provides structural and chemical information of the cell including mass, morphology, protein concentration and dynamics of the cellular membrane.
Definition: Suggested appearance of Idmonarachne brasieri. Source: Proceedings of the Royal Society BIt was “almost a spider.” That’s how the researchers referred to the ancient, 1.5-cm creature found in Montceau-les-Mines, France.
Using computed tomography reconstruction, U.K., U.S., and German researchers recently learned more about the creature’s anatomy. They’ve given the fossil creature the scientific name Idmonarachne brasieri and dated to around 305 million years ago. Their research was published today in Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
When researchers add oil to colloidal clumps, the particles recycle themselves into uniform complex base structures. All clumps containing 2 particles form dumbbell shapes, 3 particles form triangle shapes and 4 particles make up tetrahedron, like we see in this electron microscopy image. (Credit: Leiden Institute of Physics)Manufacturers produce high-end technology mostly top-down with large machinery, but small particles are able to build structures by themselves from the bottom up. A major challenge is that these particles easily clump together. Leiden physicist Daniela Kraft has developed a method to use this phenomenon to her advantage. Publication in ACS Nano.
Building blocks
Smaller computer chips, narrow sound boxes, miniature cameras; we keep aiming for smaller and more complex technology, to carry with us or to use for surgery. At the same time, it gets increasingly hard to build a complex structure on an even smaller scale. Wouldn’t it be much more convenient to build structures bottom-up, starting from tiny building blocks? That is exactly the idea within the research group of Leiden physicist Daniela Kraft. She is working on a method to build structures from colloids— particles that are larger than nanoparticles but too small to see with the naked eye. And the fun part is that colloids operate completely on their own, as independent building blocks.
Space environment data collected by New Horizons over a billion miles of its journey to Pluto will play a key role in testing and improving models of the space environment throughout the solar system. This visualization is one example of such a model: It shows the simulated space environment out to Pluto a few months before New Horizons’ closest approach. Drawn over the model is the path of New Horizons up to 2015, as well as the current direction of the two Voyager spacecraft – which are currently at three or four times New Horizons’ distance from the sun. The solar wind that New Horizons encountered will reach the Voyager spacecraft about a year later. Credits: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio, the Space Weather Research Center (SWRC) and the Community-Coordinated Modeling Center (CCMC), Enlil and Dusan Odstrcil (GMU)Despite its seemingly immense emptiness, the solar system is actually suffused with a flow of solar particles emanating from the sun.
New Horizons didn’t solely just activate to snap photographs of dwarf planet Pluto when it flew by in July 2015. As the spacecraft barreled past Jupiter in February 2007, particle instruments were activated. For more than 1 billion miles of its journey, the spacecraft took measurements of the space weather in the neighborhood of the outer planets.
NASA scientists have published New Horizons’ observations in a study appearing in The Astrophysical Journal Supplement.
The study, published today, compiles observations of solar wind from 11 to 33 astronomical units (AU). The data comes from an instrument known as the Solar Wind Around Pluto (SWAP), which is operated by the Southwest Research Institute
Scientists at the The University of Queenslandand the University of California San Francisco have found a new way to inhibit the growth of the bacterium that causes tuberculosis (TB).
UQ School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences Deputy Head Professor James De Voss said the discovery held promise for the development of treatments.
The research team, led by Professor Paul Ortiz de Montellano in the US, investigated the impact of compounds related to cholesterol on the tuberculosis-causing bacterium Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Cholesterol is known to affect the virulence and infectivity of TB.
"What Paul's team and our team have shown is that if you give this bacterium modified cholesterol instead, then it can't use it as its energy source and so it stops growing, "Professor De Voss said.
Over the 18-month trial period, abaloparatide decreased new vertebral fractures by 86 percent, compared to teriparatide’s 80 percent; and reduced non-vertebral fractures by 43 percent, whereas teriparatide performed on par with the placebo.Often referred to as a “silent disease,” osteoporosis affects approximately 9 million Americans. A further 43 million Americans suffer from low-bone density. Often, people with the disease may not know they have it until they suffer a bone break or fracture.
A disease so ubiquitous comes with a hefty price tag. According to the National Osteoporosis Foundation, bone breaks related to the disease cost around $19 billion annually. By 2025, that amount could increase to $25.3 billion.
The disease poses a substantial threat to postmenopausal women, as the lack of estrogen, a bone-protecting hormone, has a direct relationship with osteoporosis. A woman’s risk of hip fracture from osteoporosis, according to the National Osteoporosis Foundation, is on par with the combined risk of breast, uterine, and ovarian cancer.
“The disability after fracture can be incredible and not just hip (fracture),” said Dr. Lorraine Fitzpatrick, the chief medical officer of biopharmaceutical company Radius Health Inc., to R&D Magazine. “I’ve had ladies who use a walker and then they fall and break both wrists.”
“Can you imagine how disabling that is?”
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Recently, Fitzpatrick and Radius Health presented the results of Phase 3 ACTIVE trials for their investigational drug abaloparatide-SC, an injectable synthetic peptide analog of human parathyroid hormone-related protein, which is critical to the formation of the skeleton. The presentation was given at Endocrine Society 2016 Annual Meeting in Boston.
Abaloparatide showed consistent protection against bone fractures, and increased bone mineral density in a broad group of postmenopausal women with osteoporosis, Fitzpatrick said.
The trial consisted of more than 2,400 postmenopausal women between the ages of 49- and 86-years-old. The patients were either treated with a placebo, abaloparatide, or teriparatide. The latter is currently approved to combat the silent disease.
Over the 18-month trial period, abaloparatide decreased new vertebral fractures by 86 percent, compared to teriparatide’s 80 percent; and reduced non-vertebral fractures by 43 percent, whereas teriparatide performed on par with the placebo.
Additionally, patients who took abaloparatide in the study showed greater increases in bone mineral density at the total hip and femoral neck sites.
Radius Health submitted a New Drug Application to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on March 30, and the drug is currently undergoing regulatory review by the European Medicines Agency.
Like any drug, abaloparatide does have side effects, including hypercalcemia, dizziness, and palpitations. Both palpitations and hypercalcemia are known side effects of teriparatide. Although, “our amount of hypercalcemia was half of that of teriparatide,” Fitzpatrick added.
“If we can catch this earlier in the course of the disease and treat (patients), we’ll make their lives much more rewarding in their older years,” Fitzpatrick concluded.
Radius Health is in early development of a patch version of the drug.
Scientists at the T
