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for the current FDA clearance process. Te scientists found that a significant percentage of patients from India and Bangladesh did not own smartphones and would be unable to use SpiroSmart in their own homes. Tey realized that the only sensor the patients were using was a microphone, and thus decided to develop a system that would work with any phone anywhere in the world by having the patient use a call-in service.


Engines Can Enter Living Cells to Fight Disease


Actuating nano-transducers (ANTs) are tiny engines that could form the basis of future nano- machines that are able to navigate in water, sense the environment around them, or even enter living cells. Te prototype device, developed at the University of Cambridge, is composed of charged particles of gold bound together with temperature-responsive polymers in the form of a gel. When the nano-engine is heated to a certain temperature with a laser, it stores large amounts of elastic energy in a fraction of a second, as the polymer coatings expel all the water from the gel and collapse. Tis has the effect of forcing the gold nanoparticles to bind together into tight clusters. When the device is cooled, the polymers take on water and expand, and the gold nanoparticles are quickly pushed apart, like a spring.


Te forces exerted by the devices are several orders of magnitude larger than those for any other previously produced device, with a force per unit weight nearly a hundred times better than any motor or muscle. According to the researchers, the devices are also biocompatible, cost-effective to manufacture, fast to respond and energy efficient.


Atomic Force Microscope Shows Nuclear Pore Complexes in Operation


For the first time, “living” nuclear pore complexes have been captured at work. Scientists at the University of Basel used a high- speed scanning atomic force microscope (AFM) to demonstrate how these molecular machines


control the traffic entering or exiting the cell nucleus. Te researchers not only directly visualized the nuclear pore’s selective barrier, but also its dynamic behavior, to uncover the mystery of how unwanted molecules are prevented from entering the nucleus. “With the high-speed AFM we could, for the first time, peer inside native nuclear pore complexes [NPCs], only 40 nanometers in size [which] wasn’t possible until now,” said Professor Roderick Lim.


Cyclodextrin Reduces Atherosclerotic Plaque Formation


Already approved for use in humans, cyclodextrin could be tested in patients to treat atherosclerosis due to its demonstrated ability to dissolve cholesterol crystals and prevent plaque formation in mice. Cyclodextrin works by reprogramming macrophages so that they do not cause a strong inflammatory response in blood vessels that contain cholesterol crystals. Te drug also dissolves cholesterol crystals so that the cholesterol can be excreted from the body in urine. Tis resulted in the prevention of plaque formation and atherosclerotic plaque reduction in mice in a study conducted by researchers at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. When cyclodextrin was used to treat biopsies of plaques from human carotid arteries, similar results were found.


Zinc Oxide Nanoparticles Increase Growth of Food Crops


A sustainable method developed by research scientists at Washington University in St. Louis reduces the use of fertilizer made from phosphorus and improves the growth of food crops by using zinc oxide nanoparticles.


As farmers increase crops to feed the growing world population, they apply more and more phosphorus-based fertilizer. Plants, however, use roughly 42% of the phosphorus; the remainder runs off into water streams, where it grows algae that pollute water sources. In addition, nearly 82% of the world’s phosphorus is used as


AMERICAN LABORATORY 10 MAY 2016


fertilizer, but it is a limited supply, said Ramesh Raliya, School of Engineering & Applied Science. “If farmers use the same amount of phosphorus as they’re using now, the world’s supply will be depleted in about 80 years. … Now is the time for the world to learn how to use phosphorus in a more sustainable manner.”


Te researchers created zinc oxide nanoparticles from a fungus around the plant’s root that helps the plant mobilize and take up the nutrients in the soil. Zinc is an essential nutrient for plants because it interacts with enzymes that mobilize the complex form of phosphorus in the soil into a form that plants can absorb. When the zinc nanoparticles were applied to the leaves of the mung bean plant, it increased the uptake of the phosphorus by almost 11% percent and the activity of the three enzymes by 84–108%, reducing the need to add phosphorus on the soil.


Ion Conductors Show 3URPLVH IRU (IÀFLHQW


Solid-State Cooling


While solid-state cooling methods are a viable alternative to conventional refrigeration techniques, their efficiency is up to four times lower. Te required mechano-caloric effects have been observed only in expensive and scarce ferroelectric materials and superelastic metal alloys. Now, physicists at the University of Valencia’s Institute of Material Science and the School of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of New South Wales have predicted that ion-conducting materials such as fluorite might present a greater mechano-caloric effect than even the ferroelectric group.


Te study establishes the relationship between external mechanical tension and ionic transport in ion conductors using molecular dynamics (a computer simulation method for studying the physical movements of atoms and molecules) and quantum mechanics calculations. In addition, the work shows that applying pressure to the material serves as an efficient means of adjusting critical temperature in superionic compounds (fast ion conductors). Te results pave the way for rational design of green cooling technologies that are not only more ecological, but more efficient and cost-effective than conventional cooling methods.


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