Cancer-fighting nanorobots programmed to seek and destroy tumors
At Arizona State University, each nanorobot is made from a flat, rectangular DNA origami sheet, 90 nanometers by 60 nanometers in size. A key blood-clotting enzyme, called thrombin, is attached to the surface.
They were injected with an IV into a mouse, then traveled throughout the bloodstream, homing in on the tumors.
Once bound to the tumor blood vessel surface, the nanorobot was programmed, like the notorious Trojan horse, to deliver its drug cargo in the very heart of the unsuspecting tumor, exposing an enzyme called thrombin that is key to blood clotting.
The nanorobots worked fast, congregating in large numbers to quickly surround the tumor just hours after injection.
Most importantly, there was no evidence of the nanorobots spreading into the brain where it could cause unwanted side effects, such as a stroke.
The treatment blocked tumor blood supply and generated tumor tissue damage within 24 hours while having no effect on healthy tissues. After attacking tumors, most of the nanorobots were cleared and degraded from the body after 24 hours.
By two days, there was evidence of advanced thrombosis, and in three days, thrombi in all tumor vessels were observed.
Partly excerpted from:
https://phys.org/news/2018-02-cancer-fighting-nanorobots-tumors.html#jCp
Flu Vaccine Is 36% Effective Overall
The vaccine is 67% effective against the A(H1N1)pdm09 viruses and 42% effective against influenza B viruses. Against the season’s dominant strain, the H3N2 strain, was lower, at 25%.
The US Health and Human Services (HHS) reports that of the 63 children who have died of the vaccine thus far, three fourths of them had not received the vaccine.
All the experts on the briefing panel agree that getting a flu shot, even this late in the season, will help protect Americans.
Surgeon General Jerome Adams said, “The flu vaccination is safe, and it is still your best defense. Getting vaccinated does not mean that you can’t or won’t get sick, but it can reduce the duration and severity of illness and limit spread to others.”
Breakthrough in catalysis may lead to much cleaner Diesel engine emissions
Electric batteries can power cars, but the much greater energy demand in trucks hauling heavy loads will require Diesel engines in trucks for much farther into the future.
Catalysis is an important process that allows us to clean up the pollution that we would otherwise emit into the atmosphere.
In recent years the team at the University of St Andrews in Scotland have been exploring metal nanoparticles prepared at the surface of perovskite oxides.
Perovskite is a naturally-occurring calcium titanium oxide mineral composed of calcium titanate (CaTiO3). Perovskite is found at Magnet Cove, Arkansas, in Italy, in Switzerland, and other places.
Now, working closely with researchers at Newcastle University they have demonstrated that pollution particles may remain pinned to their initial locations, where they can be changed into non-hazardous materials.
These catalysts performed exhaust clean-up from diesel emissions, oxidizing CO and NO simultaneously over hundreds of hours of operation. The concept represents a major advance in the design of earth-abundant metal catalysts rivalling platinum.
U.S. must invest more in Quantum Computing
I (Editor Dave) will try to give you an very simplified explanation of quantum computing. I’m a physicist by education, finished at UW in 1962 when quantum theory was just beginning to be taught to undergraduates, so I got only a little bit of it, and remember very little of that.
The below is my reply to an inquiry from Washington State Senator Fred Braun’s staff.
My simplified explanation of quantum computing: Suppose we create a quantum pair, many kinds of pairs are possible, but for example, two magnetic particles like those that exist by the jillions on every hard drive disk, one magnetically north, the other south.
When we change one, because they are a quantum pair, the other changes instantaneously.
The change occurs instantly no matter how far they are apart, even across the universe. The communication is not at the speed of light, but instantaneous. Communication within computers, though very fast, does take some time as it is limited by the speed of light, but in quantum computers can be made infinitely fast, instantaneous.
Decryptions of our encrypted messages that now are “impossible,” because they would take millions of years by even our fastest computers, could now be done instantly. The present encryption methods will become useless; there will be no more secure encryption.
And we know that the Chinese are already well ahead of us, and are investing very much more than we are investing in quantum research.
And artificial intelligence, a similar issue as regards Chinese advancements, is just as serious an issue.
Such was the testimony of our top national intelligence experts before the U.S. Congress on Feb. 13. Sadly the media and many members of congress concentrated on the more sensational Trump-Russian conjectures rather than on the very serious security testimony.
The bottom link below is to the full two-hours-plus Congressional hearing.
Info: shpr.fyi/2HwbEgT or