Tech

Researchers at RIT have found a more efficient fabricating process to produce semiconductors used in today's electronic devices. They also confirmed that materials other than silicon can be used successfully in the development process that could increase performance of electronic devices. This fabrication process--the I-MacEtch, or inverse metal-assisted chemical etching method--can help meet the growing demand for more powerful and reliable nano-technologies needed for solar cells, smartphones, telecommunications grids and new applications in photonics and quantum computing.

"What is novel about our work is that for the first time we are looking at applying I-MacEtch processing to indium-gallium-phosphide materials. I-MacEtch is an alternative to two conventional approaches and is a technique that has been used in the field--but the materials that have been explored are fairly limited," said Parsian Mohseni, assistant professor of microsystems engineering in RIT's Kate Gleason College of Engineering. He is also director of the EINS Laboratory at the university.

Demands for improved computer processing power have led researchers to explore both new processes and other materials beyond silicon to produce electronic components, Mohseni explained. The I-MacEtch process combines the benefits of two traditional methods--wet etching and reactive ion etching, or REI. Indium-gallium-phosphide is one of several materials being tested to complement silicon as a means to improve current capacity of semiconductor processing.

"This is a very well-known material and has applications in the electronics and solar cell industries," he said. "We are not re-inventing the wheel; we are establishing new protocols for treating the existing material that is more cost effective, and a more sustainable process."

Semiconductor devices are created on wafers through a multi-step process to coat, remove or pattern conductive materials. Traditional processes are wet etch, where a sample with blocked aspects is immersed in an acid bath to remove substances, and reactive ion etching, where ions bombard exposed surfaces on the wafer to change its chemical properties and remove materials in those exposed regions. Both have been used to develop the intricate electronic patterns on circuits and use silicon as a foundation for this type of patterning. Improving patterning methods by I-MacEtch could mean reducing fabrication complexity of various photonic and electronic devices.

Researchers and semiconductor fabrication scientists have been using MacEtch extensively for processing silicon. At the same time, assessments of other materials in the III-V range of individual elements that may be conducive to this same type of fabrication with similar advantages are underway. In his research, Mohseni is also looking at different alloys of those III-V materials, namely the ternary alloys such as indium-gallium-phosphide (InGaP).

The research detailed in the upcoming issue of the American Chemical Society's Applied Materials and Interfaces journal highlights how the nanofabrication methodology was applied to InGaP and how it can impact the processing of device applications and generation of high aspect ratio and nano-scale semiconductor features, said Thomas Wilhelm, a microsystems engineering doctoral student and first-author of the paper. The novel processing method can be significant in the development of ordered arrays of high aspect ratio structures such as nanowires.

For solar cells, the goal is to minimize the cost-to-power-produced ratio, and if it is possible to lower the cost of making the cell, and increasing the efficiency of it, this improves the device overall. Exploring new methods of fabricating the existing, relevant materials in a way that allows for faster, less expensive and more controlled processing by combining the benefits of wet etching and RIE has been the focus of Mohseni's work. The improved process means avoiding expensive, bulky, hazardous processing methods.

"We are using a simple benchtop set up and we end up with very similar structures; in fact, one can argue that they are higher in quality than the structures that we can generate with RIE for a fraction of the cost and with less time, less steps throughout, without the higher temperature conditions or expensive instrumentation," he said.

Humans have long tried to explain how stars came to light up the night sky. The wide array of theories throughout history have one common (and correct) governing principle that astrophysicists still use to this day: by understanding the stars and their origins, we learn more about where we come from.

However, the vastness of our galaxy--let alone our entire universe--means experiments to understand our origins are expensive, difficult, and time consuming. In fact, experiments are impossible for studying certain aspects of astrophysics, meaning that in order to gain greater insight into how galaxies formed, researchers rely on supercomputing.

In an attempt to develop a more complete picture of galaxy formation, researchers from the Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies, the Max-Planck Institutes for Astrophysics and for Astronomy, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard University, and the Center for Computational Astrophysics in New York have turned to supercomputing resources at the High-Performance Computing Center Stuttgart (HLRS), one of the three world-class German supercomputing facilities that comprise the Gauss Centre for Supercomputing (GCS). The resulting simulation will help to verify and expand on existing experimental knowledge about the universe's early stages.

Recently, the team expanded on its 2015 record-breaking "Illustris" simulation--the largest-ever hydrological simulation of galaxy formation. Hydrodynamic simulations allow researchers to accurately simulate the movement of gas. Stars form from cosmic gas, and stars' light provides astrophysicists and cosmologists with important information for understanding how the universe works.

The researchers improved on the scope and accuracy of their simulation, naming this phase of the project, "Illustris, The Next Generation," or "IllustrisTNG." The team released its first round of findings across three journal articles appearing in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society and are preparing several more for publication.

Magnetic modelling

Just as humanity cannot envision exactly how the universe came to be, a computer simulation cannot recreate the birth of the universe in a literal sense. Instead, researchers feed equations and other starting conditions--observations coming from satellite arrays and other sources--into a gigantic computational cube representing a large swath of the universe and then use numerical methods to set this "universe in a box" in motion.

For many aspects of the simulation, researchers can start their calculations at a fundamental, or ab initio, level with no need for preconceived input data, but processes that are less understood--such as star formation and the growth of supermassive black holes--need to be informed by observation and by making assumptions that can simplify the deluge of calculations.

As computational power and know-how have increased, so too has the ability to simulate larger areas of space and increasingly intricate and complex phenomena related to galaxy formation. With IllustrisTNG, the team simulated 3 different universe "slices" at different resolutions. The largest was 300 megaparsecs across, or roughly 1 billion light years. The team used 24,000 cores on Hazel Hen over the span of 35 million core hours.

In one of IllustrisTNG 's major advances, the researchers reworked the simulation to include a more precise accounting for magnetic fields, improving the simulation's accuracy. "Magnetic fields are interesting for a variety of reasons," said Prof. Dr. Volker Springel, professor and researcher at the Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies and principal investigator on the project. "The magnetic pressure exerted on cosmic gas can occasionally be equal to thermal (temperature) pressure, meaning that if you neglect this, you will miss these effects and ultimately compromise your results."

While developing IllustrisTNG the team also made a surprising advance in understanding black hole physics. Based on observational knowledge, the researchers knew that supermassive black holes propel cosmic gases with a lot of energy while also "blowing" this gas away from galaxy clusters. This helps to "shut off" star formation in the biggest galaxies and thus imposes a limit on the maximum size they can reach.

In the previous Illustris simulation, researchers noticed that while black holes go through this energy transfer process, they would not shut off the star formation completely. By revising the black holes' physics in the simulation, the team saw much better agreement between the data and observation, giving researchers greater confidence that their simulation corresponds to reality.

A long-standing alliance

The team has been using GCS resources since 2015 and been running the IllustrisTNG simulation on HLRS resources since March 2016. Considering that IllustrisTNG's dataset is both larger and more accurate than the original, the researchers are confident their data will be used far and wide while they apply for more time to continue refining the simulation. The original Illustris data release garnered 2,000 registered users and resulted in more than 130 publications.

During that time, the researchers have relied on GCS support staff to help with several low-level issues related to their code, specifically related to memory crashes and file system issues. Team members Drs. Dylan Nelson and Rainer Weinberger also both benefitted from attending 2016 and 2017 machine-level scaling workshops at HLRS. The team's long-standing collaboration with HLRS has resulted in winning 2016 and 2017 Golden Spike awards, which are given to outstanding user projects during HLRS' annual Results and Review Workshop.

Nelson pointed out that while current-generation supercomputers have enabled simulations that have largely overcome most fundamental issues related to massive-scale cosmological modelling, there are still opportunities for improvement.

"Increased memory and processing resources in next-generation systems will allow us to simulate large volumes of the universe with higher resolution," Nelson said. "Large volumes are important for cosmology, understanding the large-scale structure of the universe, and making firm predictions for the next generation of large observational projects. High resolution is important for improving our physical models of the processes going on inside of individual galaxies in our simulation."

CHICAGO--A new study helps explain changes in the intestines that may be responsible for the reversal of diabetes in people who undergo a type of bariatric surgery known as Roux-en-Y gastric bypass surgery (RYGB). The research will be presented Sunday, March 18, at ENDO 2018, the Endocrine Society's 100th annual meeting in Chicago, Ill.

"Bariatric surgery is the most effective option for obesity and its complications, such as type 2 diabetes," said Margaret A. Stefater, M.D, Ph.D., the lead author of the study and a fellow at Boston Children's Hospital, Harvard Medical School in Boston, Mass. In many people who have had RYGB, their diabetes abates even before they start to lose weight. However, "bariatric surgery is not for everyone with obesity, as it is associated with side effects. Our aim is to 'reverse engineer' the surgery, to find how it works and apply the mechanisms to new, less invasive treatments," Stefater said.

Stefater is spearheading a study investigating whether changes in the intestine of human patients who undergo the surgery could lead to weight loss and diabetes improvement. This is an NIH-funded registered clinical trial, which is a collaboration between Dr. Nicholas Stylopoulos of Boston Children's Hospital and Dr. Anita Courcoulas of the University of Pittsburgh. A total of 32 patients will be recruited for this study; the data presented at the meeting is based on the first 19 patients. The researchers obtained intestinal biopsies of the patients in the study at the time of the surgery, and 1, 6 and 12 months afterwards. They performed analysis of the samples to look for changes in the expression of genes over time.

The study found the surgery led to dramatic changes in gene expression in intestinal tissue, which explains and predicts blood glucose improvement and body weight loss after RYGB surgery in humans. The changes appear early after the surgery and persist over time. "This study is the first to link changes in intestinal biology to clinical improvement after bariatric surgery," Stefater said.

"As the lab has previously shown, in rodents undergoing the surgery, the intestine increases use of glucose from the bloodstream, leading to a reversal of diabetes. The intestine after surgery becomes a different organ, growing thicker and longer," Stefater said. The investigators hypothesize that the intestine uses more glucose in order to support its increased energetic needs.

"The findings point strongly to a mechanism behind RYGB-elicited metabolic improvement and highlight potential for engineering better, perhaps nonsurgical obesity and type 2 diabetes therapies," Stefater said.

The researchers will discuss the study at a news conference Monday at 9 a.m. Central. Register to view the webcast at endowebcasting.com.

Recent developments in neuroscience set high requirements for sophisticated data management, not least when implantable Brain Machine Interfaces are used to establish electronic communication between the brain's nerve cells and computers.

A new method developed by researchers at Lund University in Sweden makes it possible to recode neural signals into a format that computer processors can use instantly. The method has now been published in the respected scientific journal, Neuroinformatics.

The Lund researchers used simulated recordings from nerve cells to evaluate the method. They were able to show that they can simultaneously collect data from over one million nerve cells, analyse the information and provide feedback within a few milliseconds.

"The method will enable us to optimise the way we utilise the high-quality stable recordings that we can carry out with electrodes developed at the Neuronano Research Center", says Jens Schouenborg, Professor of Neurophysiology at Lund University and one of the researchers behind the study.

Progress within brain research in recent years has given rise to considerable handling challenges regarding the volume of information generated when "listening to" and communicating with a large number of the brain's nerve cells, with applications in basic research, clinical diagnosis and treatment.

Whether it concerns using the signals from the nerve cells of a paralysed patient to control a robot arm, or using information from the nerve cells to reveal an imminent epileptic seizure, there is a need for extremely fast handling and interpretation of the large volume of generated biological data.

RECODE INTO COMPUTER LANGUAGE

The method that the researchers at the Neuronano Research Centre at Lund University have developed enables simultaneous communication in real time with millions of nerve cells.

"Recoding the nerve cell signals directly into bitcode dramatically increases the storage capacity. "However, the biggest gain is that the method enables us to store the information in a way that makes it immediately available to the computers' processors", explains Jens Schouenborg.

In addition to the large number of nerve cells and the volume of information in the signals from each cell, the challenge is that information must be simultaneously translated in order to facilitate meaningful communication with the brain.

LISTENING TO INDIVIDUAL NERVE CELLS

Martin Garwicz, one of the researchers behind the study, outlines how their method differs from other ways of analysing nerve cell activity based, for example, on EEG, in which electrodes are positioned on the outside of the scalp.

"Imagine that you want to hear what ten people in the room next door are talking about. If you listen by putting your ear against the wall you will just hear murmurs, but if you put a microphone on each person in the room, it transforms your ability to understand the conversation. And then think about being able to listen to one million individuals, find patterns in what's communicated and instantly respond to it - that's what our new method makes possible", says Martin Garwicz, Professor of Neurophysiology at Lund University.

REQUIRED NEW FORMS OF DATA HANDLING

The method developed by the researchers enables two-way communication with individual nerve cells.

"A considerable benefit of this architecture and data format is that it doesn't require further translation, as the brain's signals are translated directly into bitcode. This means a considerable advantage in all communication between the brain and computers, not least regarding clinical applications", says Bengt Ljungquist, lead author of the study and doctoral student at Lund University.

AUGUSTA, Ga. (March 19 , 2018) - A small, daily dose of Viagra significantly reduces colorectal cancer risk in an animal model that is genetically predetermined to have the third leading cause of cancer death, scientists report.

Viagra cut in half the formation of polyps, an abnormal and often asymptomatic clump of cells on the lining of the intestines that may become cancer, says Dr. Darren D. Browning, cancer researcher at the Georgia Cancer Center and Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University.

Next steps should include a clinical trial for the drug in patients considered at high risk of colorectal cancer, such as those with a strong family history, multiple previous polyps and chronic intestinal inflammation like colitis, Browning says.

Viagra has been used safely for years in a wide range of doses and age groups, from premature infants with pulmonary hypertension to the elderly with erectile dysfunction, he notes.

When placed in the drinking water, Browning's team found that Viagra reduced polyps in a mouse model with a genetic mutation that occurs in humans, causing them to produce hundreds of polyps starting as teenagers and essentially always resulting in colorectal cancer, says Browning, corresponding author of the study in the journal Cancer Prevention Research.

"Giving a baby dose of Viagra can reduce the amount of tumors in these animals by half," Browning says.

Viagra is best known for its ability to relax the smooth muscle cells around blood vessels so the vessels can more easily fill with blood, which is how it helps both erectile dysfunction and pulmonary hypertension. But Browning's lab is showing it also increases levels of the chemical cyclic GMP, which is known to affect the intestinal lining, called the epithelium.

While the details of just how remain unclear, Browning and his team have seen that the results of increased cyclic GMP include suppression of some of the excessive cell proliferation that occurs in the gut and an increase in normal cell differentiation as well as the natural elimination of abnormal cells, through a process called apoptosis.

"When we give Viagra, we shrink the whole proliferating compartment," says Browning, in an area of our body that directly deals with whatever we put in our mouths and normally experiences high cell turnover "Proliferating cells are more subject to mutations that cause cancer."

Existing polyps were not affected, more evidence that targeting cyclic GMP signaling appears to be a good prevention strategy in high-risk patients, he says.

Viagra is known to inhibit PDE5, a naturally occurring enzyme in colon cells - and other tissues - that breaks down cyclic GMP so there is more of it available to reduce cell proliferation and improve differentiation into cells like the goblet cells that secret protective mucus.

Guanylyl-cyclase C, or GCC, is the primary source of cyclic GMP in the intestinal lining. Mice like those in his study with the genetic predisposition for polyps, were found to have reduced levels of GCC-activating peptides, which are also commonly lost in human colon cancers.

The mice have mutations in the APC - adenomatous polyposis coli - gene, a known tumor suppressor. Like these mice, people with mutations in the APC gene can develop hundreds of polyps in the colon and rectum and are considered at highest risk for colorectal cancer, says Browning of the inherited disorder called familial adenomatous polyposis. The average age at which individuals develop colon cancer is 39, according to the National Institutes of Health.

The scientists also looked at the prescription drug linaclotide, which is used to treat constipation and irritable bowel syndrome with constipation and, like Viagra, is known to increase cyclic GMP. While linaclotide was also effective at significantly reducing polyp formation, the common side effect of diarrhea at pretty much any dose makes it unlikely that patients would find it tolerable to use long term, even to reduce their cancer risk, Browning says. The low doses of Viagra used by humans and in the lab, on the other hand, have no known side effects, Browning notes.

Browning's lab published a paper in July in Cancer Prevention Research that showed Viagra cut polyp formation in half in a mouse model of colitis, an inflammation of the colon and risk factor for colorectal cancer. But in this model as well, they found the drug targeted problems from the genetic mutations, although inflammation also was reduced.

He notes that inflammation is the driver in less than 5 percent of colorectal cancers. About 80 percent form spontaneously when cells in this high-cell turnover area divide and develop a mutation that may support uncontrolled proliferation. Mutations occur most often when we consume carcinogens like those found in processed or over-cooked meats.

Intermittent energy restriction diets such as the 5:2 diet clears fat from the blood quicker after eating meals compared with daily calorie restriction diets, reducing an important risk factor for cardiovascular disease, a new study in the British Journal of Nutrition reports.

In the first study of its kind, researchers from the University of Surrey examined the impact of the 5:2 diet on the body's ability to metabolise and clear fat and glucose after a meal and compared it to the effects of weight-loss achieved via a more conventional daily calorie restriction diet. Previous studies in this field have predominantly focused on blood risk markers taken in the fasted state, which only tend to be, in for the minority of the time, overnight.

During the study, overweight participants were assigned to either the 5:2 diet or a daily calorie restriction diet and were required to lose five per cent of their weight. Those on the 5:2 diet ate normally for five days and for their two fasting days consumed 600 calories, using LighterLife Fast Foodpacks, whilst those on the daily diet were advised to eat 600 calories less per day than their estimated requirements for weight maintenance (in the study women ate approx. 1400 calories, men ate approx. 1900 calories/day).

Under the expert guidance of the team, those on the 5:2 diet achieved 5 per cent weight-loss in 59 days compared to those on the daily calorie restriction diet who took in 73 days. 27 participants completed the study, with approximately 20 per cent of participants in both groups dropped out because they either could not tolerate the diet or were unable to attain their 5 per cent weight-loss target.

Researchers found that following weight-loss, participants who followed the 5:2 diet cleared the fat (triglyceride) from a meal given to them more efficiently than the participants undertaking the daily diet. Although there were no differences in post meal glucose handling, researchers were surprised to find differences between the diets in c-peptide (a marker of insulin secretion from the pancreas) following the meal, the significance of which will need further investigation.

The study also found a greater reduction in systolic blood pressure (the pressure in your blood vessels when your heart beats) in participants on the 5:2 diet. Systolic blood pressure was reduced by 9% of following the 5:2, compared to a small 2% increase among those on the daily diet. A reduction in systolic blood pressure reduces pressure on arteries, potentially lessening incidences of heart attacks and strokes.

Dr Rona Antoni, Research Fellow in Nutritional Metabolism at the University of Surrey, said: "As seen in this study, some of our participants struggled to tolerate the 5:2 diet, which suggests that this approach is not suited to everybody; ultimately the key to dieting success is finding an approach you can sustain long term.

"But for those who do well and are able stick to the 5:2 diet, it could potentially have a beneficial impact on some important risk markers for cardiovascular disease, in some cases more so than daily dieting. However, we need further studies to confirm our findings, to understand the underlying mechanisms and to improve the tolerability of the 5:2 diet."

A new study by researchers Nikolaos Gatsis, David Akopian and Ahmad F. Taha and their graduate student Ali Khalajmehrabadi from the UTSA Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering describes a computer algorithm that mitigates the effects of spoofed GPS attacks on electrical grids and other GPS-reliant technologies. This new algorithm has the potential to help cybersecurity professionals to better detect and prevent cyber attacks in real time.

"Malicious agents have the ability to disrupt a device's understanding of time and location by emitting a signal that is pretending to be a GPS signal," Gatsis said. "This can be very harmful in several different realms of technology."

The U.S. electrical power grid, for example, depends on GPS to give time stamps for its measurements at stations across the country. Although reliable, researchers in laboratories across the world have shown that the system can be vulnerable to spoofing cyber-attacks that can disrupt the system's time and location data.

"In broad terms, malicious cyber-attackers can clone the GPS signal and display, for instance, the wrong time or the wrong location," Akopian said. "This can wreak all sorts of havoc. It can send people to the wrong location or render hours of data useless."

The trio's algorithm, which can be applied to cell phones or computers as easily as a new app, has the ability to recognize false GPS signals and counter an attack while it occurs. Their main focus has been preventing attacks on the American electrical power grid, but the algorithm is applicable to several different devices.

"As we move forward with this concept of driverless cars, it becomes much more vital that we secure our GPS signals because the hijacking of the location abilities of a driverless car could be very dangerous," Taha said. "Beyond that, cell phone towers and banks also use GPS signals. Every day, hundreds of thousands of measurements of time and location are made using this information--and it's important to make the data secure."

Our political attitudes in adulthood have roots in early childhood temperament, according to new findings published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science. Analyses of data from more than 16,000 participants in two longitudinal studies in the United Kingdom reveal links between conduct problems at ages 5 and 7 and economic and political discontent 25 years later.

"Findings from both studies indicate that children who showed higher levels of conduct problems -- that is, aggression, fighting, stealing from peers -- were more likely to be economically left leaning and distrustful of the political system as adults," says study author Gary J. Lewis of Royal Holloway, University of London. "Some, but not all, of this link was explained by educational attainment and socioeconomic status in adulthood."

The findings shed light on the relationship between personality traits and political sentiment, suggesting a link that spans more than two decades.

Lewis investigated this link by analyzing data from the British Cohort Study and the National Child Development Study, two longitudinal cohort studies following individuals in the United Kingdom.

Participants' parents completed an assessment of their children's behavior when the children were either 5 or 7 years old, reporting on behaviors related to anxiety, conduct problems, and hyperactivity.

At age 30 or 33, the participants completed measures that gauged their economic conservatism, political cynicism, racism, authoritarianism, and attitudes about gender inequality. These measures cohered into two broad factors: economic/political discontent and social conservatism.

The studies also included data about the parents' social class and the participants' childhood intelligence, educational attainment, and social class in adulthood.

Modeling the relationships among these variables, Lewis found that childhood conduct problems were associated with economic/political discontent in adulthood, even after parental social class and childhood intelligence were taken into account. It is possible, Lewis notes, that conduct problems in childhood may reflect difficulty with self-control and long-term planning or early rejection of authority, either of which could lead to economic/political discontent.

The models also indicated indirect pathways in both cohorts, by which conduct problems were associated with lower educational attainment and adult social class and, ultimately, greater economic/political discontent.

These associations may be modest in strength, says Lewis, but they are stable over a 25-year span, suggesting early foundations of later political attitudes. Future research with more detailed and frequent assessments will help to illuminate the exact nature of these long-term associations.

"We all wonder from time to time why it is that those on the other side of the fence came to be that way," Lewis notes. "These findings take us a little further down the road to answering that question."

Researchers from the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering have developed new wound dressings that dramatically accelerate healing and improve tissue regeneration. The two different types of nanofiber dressings, described in separate papers, use naturally-occurring proteins in plants and animals to promote healing and regrow tissue.

"Our fiber manufacturing system was developed specifically for the purpose of developing therapeutics for the wounds of war," said Kit Parker, the Tarr Family Professor of Bioengineering and Applied Physics at SEAS and senior author of the research. "As a soldier in Afghanistan, I witnessed horrible wounds and, at times, the healing process for those wounds was a horror unto itself. This research is a years-long effort by many people on my team to help with these problems."

Parker is also a Core Faculty Member of the Wyss Institute.

The most recent paper, published in Biomaterials, describes a wound dressing inspired by fetal tissue.

In the late 1970s, when scientists first started studying the wound healing process early in development, they discovered something unexpected: wounds incurred before the third trimester left no scars. This opened a range of possibilities for regenerative medicine. But for decades, researchers have struggled to replicate those unique properties of fetal skin.

Unlike adult skin, fetal skin has high levels of a protein called fibronectin, which assembles into the extracellular matrix and promotes cell binding and adhesion. Fibronectin has two structures: globular, which is found in blood, and fibrous, which is found in tissue. Even though fibrous fibronectin holds the most promise for wound healing, previous research focused on the globular structure, in part because manufacturing fibrous fibronectin was a major engineering challenge.

But Parker and his team are pioneers in the field of nanofiber engineering.

The researchers made fibrous fibronectin using a fiber manufacturing platform called Rotary Jet-Spinning (RJS), developed by Parker's Disease Biophysics Group. RJS works likes a cotton candy machine -- a liquid polymer solution, in this case globular fibronectin dissolved in a solvent, is loaded into a reservoir and pushed out through a tiny opening by centrifugal force as the device spins. As the solution leaves the reservoir, the solvent evaporates and the polymers solidify. The centrifugal force unfolds the globular protein into small, thin fibers. These fibers -- less than one micrometer in diameter -- can be collected to form a large-scale wound dressing or bandage.

"The dressing integrates into the wound and acts like an instructive scaffold, recruiting different stem cells that are relevant for regeneration and assisting in the healing process before being absorbed into the body," said Christophe Chantre, a graduate student in the Disease Biophysics Group and first author of the paper.

In in vivo testing, the researchers found that wounds treated with the fibronectin dressing
showed 84 percent tissue restoration within 20 days, compared to 55.6 percent restoration in
wounds treated with a standard dressing.

The researchers also demonstrated that wounds treated with the fibronectin dressing have close to normal epidermal thickness and dermal architecture, and even regrew hair follicles -- often considered one of the biggest challenges in the field of wound healing.

"This is an important step forward," said Chantre. "Most work done on skin regeneration to date involves complex treatments combining scaffolds, cells and even growth factors. Here we were able to demonstrate tissue repair and hair follicle regeneration using an entirely material approach. This has clear advantages for clinical translation."

In another paper published in Advanced Healthcare Materials, the Disease Biophysics Group demonstrated a soy-based nanofiber that also enhances and promotes wound healing.

Soy protein contains both estrogen-like molecules -- which have been shown to accelerate wound healing -- and bioactive molecules similar to those that build and support human cells.

"Both the soy and fibronectin fiber technologies owe their success to keen observations in reproductive medicine," said Parker. "During a woman's cycle, when her estrogen levels go high, a cut will heal faster. If you do a surgery on a baby still in the womb, they have scar-less wound healing. Both of these new technologies are rooted in the most fascinating of all the topics in human biology -- how we reproduce."

In a similar way to fibronectin fibers, the research team used RJS to spin ultra-thin soy fibers into wound dressings. In experiments, the soy and cellulose-based dressing demonstrated a 72-percent increase in healing over wounds with no dressing and a 21-percent increase in healing over wounds dressed without soy protein.

"These findings show the great promise of soy-based nanofibers for wound healing," said Seungkuk Ahn, a graduate student in the Disease Biophysics Group and first author of the paper. "These one-step, cost-effective scaffolds could be the next generation of regenerative dressings and push the envelope of nanofiber technology and the wound care market."

Both kinds of dressing, according to researchers, have advantages in the wound-healing space. The soy-based nanofibers -- consisting of cellulose acetate and soy protein hydrolysate -- are inexpensive, making them a good option for large-scale usage, such as on burns. The fibronectin dressings, on the other hand, could be used for smaller wounds on the face and hands, where the prevention of scarring is important.

Breast cancer, in the stage with distant metastases, is an incurable disease with a 5 years survival rate of about 5-10% (1). Immunotherapy has recently improved survival in metastatic breast cancer patients with breast cancer harbouring the expression of HER 2 receptor. Particularly in HER 2 positive patients pertuzumab plus trastuzumab and docetaxel is the recommended first line regimen and in triple negative breast cancer patients (TNBC) bevacizumab plus paclitaxel or docetaxel is a reasonable option. In the metastatic breast cancer patients responding to conventional antiestrogens without or with HER 2 receptor, the addition of interferon beta-interleukin 2 sequence importantly prolongs quality and length of survival in a pilot study of 42 patients. In fact, in all patients median progression-free survival (PFS) from the beginning of hormone-therapy was 33 months, (Fig.1) and median OS 82 months (Fig 2); cumulative survival at 5 and 10 years±SE were 0.69±0.07 and 0.15±0.06 respectively. In the overall population these data confirm the previously reported findings (2-4). In the luminal sub-type, median PFS was 33 months (Fig.3) and median OS was 91 months (Fig 4). In the non-luminal sub-type, median PFS was 32 months and median OS was 59 months. Therefore, a relevant PFS and OS improvement occurred both in luminal and in non-luminal molecular subtypes compared with that expected in similar populations. In fact, equal or less than 10 months [5-6] is the reported median PFS in non-luminal breast cancer patients and it ranges from 11.2 months [7] to 15.6 months [8] in luminal patients. Moreover, 30.6 and 24.4 months have been reported as the best median OS in luminal and non-luminal breast cancer patients respectively [9]. In some observational or phase I/II studies on HER 2 peptide/protein vaccines promising although preliminary findings have been reported.

CHICAGO--Consumption of low-calorie sweeteners could promote metabolic syndrome and predispose people to prediabetes and diabetes, particularly in individuals with obesity, a new study on human fat-derived stem cells and fat samples suggests. The research results will be presented Sunday, March 18, at ENDO 2018, the 100th annual meeting of the Endocrine Society in Chicago, Ill.

Metabolic syndrome is a group of risk factors--high blood pressure, high blood sugar, unhealthy cholesterol levels and abdominal fat--that double the risk of blood vessel and heart disease, which can lead to heart attacks and strokes. They increase the risk of diabetes by three to five times.

"Our stem cell-based studies indicate that low-calorie sweeteners promote additional fat accumulation within cells compared with cells not exposed to these substances, in a dose-dependent fashion--meaning that as the dose of sucralose is increased more cells showed increased fat droplet accumulation," said Sabyasachi Sen, M.D., Associate Professor of Medicine at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. "This most likely occurs by increasing glucose entry into cells through increased activity of genes called glucose transporters."

In addition to stem cells, the researchers also studied human fat samples collected from individuals with obesity who consumed low-calorie sweeteners. They found similar changes in gene expression in the same genes with increased activity of glucose transporters in both the stem cells and the fat cells, Sen noted.

He noted these findings are of greatest concern for people who have obesity and prediabetes or diabetes, since they are already at heightened risk of heart attacks and strokes. "We think the effect is more pronounced in overweight and obese people rather than their normal weight counterparts because they have more insulin resistance and may have more glucose in their blood," he said.

Sen and his colleagues tested sucralose, a popular low-calorie sweetener, on stem cells--cells that could change into mature fat, muscle, cartilage or bone cells--taken from human fat tissue. They placed these cells in Petri dishes for 12 days in media that promotes fat production, to mimic an environment that promotes obesity.

At a 0.2-millimolar sucralose dose similar to the concentration found in the blood of people with high consumption of low-calorie sweeteners--equal to four cans of diet soda per day--the researchers said they observed increased expression of genes that are markers of fat production and inflammation.

With this evidence, the investigators then conducted a separate experiment. They analyzed biopsy samples of abdominal fat obtained from 18 subjects who said they consumed low-calorie sweeteners (mainly sucralose and a trace of aspartame, and/or acesulfame potassium).

Four of the subjects were healthy weight, and fourteen had obesity. In the healthy weight subjects, the difference in gene expressions were not significant. However, in the subjects with obesity or overweight, the researchers noted significant evidence of increased glucose (sugar) transport into cells and overexpression of known fat-producing genes, compared with fat biopsy samples from subjects who did not consume low-calorie sweeteners.

Sen previously conducted the same study on a total of eight subjects with similar results. "Because we found the same results with the, larger sample size, we have much more confidence that low-calorie sweeteners are causing metabolic dysfunction," Sen said.

In a new cell culture study, Sen found that sucralose appears to promote oxygen radical accumulation - a highly reactive particles that can cause disease and inflammation inside cells. These oxygen radicals interfere with cell activity and slow down metabolism, which promotes accumulation of fat in the cell. "This provides another explanation of how sucralose may interfere with metabolism," he said.

LOS ANGELES (March 18, 2018)--Interactive virtual reality (VR) brings medical images to life on screen, showing interventional radiologists a patient's unique internal anatomy to help physicians effectively prepare and tailor their approach to complex treatments, such as splenic artery aneurysm repair, according to new research being presented today at the Society of Interventional Radiology's 2018 Annual Scientific Meeting.

"Treating splenic artery aneurysms can be very difficult because of their intricate nature and anatomic variations from patient to patient," said Zlatko Devcic, M.D., a fellow of interventional radiology at Stanford University School of Medicine and collaborating author of the study. "This new platform allows you to view a patient's arterial anatomy in a three-dimensional image, as if it is right in front of you, which may help interventional radiologists more quickly and thoroughly plan for the equipment and tools they'll need for a successful outcome."

Researchers compared the new VR technology to the use of images from a commonly used visualization software system that displays images on a standard two-dimensional platform.

VR turns a patient's pre-procedural CT scans into 3-D images that the radiologist can virtually move and examine while wearing virtual reality-type glasses. By allowing the operator to manipulate routine, two-dimensional images in an open three-dimensional space, VR provides a look into a patients' organs and tissues that had not been possible outside of the human body, until now. As a result, the operator is armed with a deeper and intuitive understanding of spatial relationships, such as between an aneurysm and the surrounding arteries.

In the study, three radiologists, using both technologies, independently evaluated 17 splenic artery aneurysms in 14 patients. Researchers measured the radiologists' accuracy in identifying inflow and outflow arteries associated with the aneurysms with each method. Radiologists in the study also ranked improvements in their confidence on a four-point scale when using VR compared to the standard method.

Researchers found accuracy was similar with both methods, though confidence improved substantially with VR. In fact, 93 percent of participating physicians who used the VR method indicated higher confidence in their abilities (a score of at least 3).

"Pre-operative planning is possibly the most important step towards successfully treating a patient, so the value of VR cannot be understated," Devcic said. "This technology gives us a totally different way to look at that structure and safely plan our approach to patient care."

Researchers hope that future studies will examine whether this technology will ultimately help reduce the time needed to perform the treatment and as a result, reduce the amount of radiation and contrast exposure to the patient.

CHICAGO--Not enough women of childbearing age who have diabetes are receiving the recommended preconception counseling, a new study suggests. The findings will be presented in a poster on Saturday at ENDO 2018, the 100th annual meeting of the Endocrine Society in Chicago, Ill.

Women with type 1 or type 2 diabetes and their babies benefit from strict blood sugar control before and during pregnancy, and the American Diabetes Association recommends that all women who have diabetes and are of childbearing age receive preconception counseling beginning at puberty.

"In our study, rates of preconception counseling among women of childbearing age with diabetes were very low," said lead study author Angela L. Magdaleno, D.O., a medical resident Lehigh Valley Health Network in Allentown, Pa. "Primary care providers believed they were providing preconception counseling with patients more frequently than they actually were."

"Previous studies have shown that preconception counseling decreases birth defects and other complications in babies of mothers with type 1 and type 2 diabetes. However, in our study, primary care physicians in Obstetrics and Gynecology, Internal Medicine, and Family Medicine did not regularly discuss glucose control or provide comprehensive counseling with their patients prior to conception," she said.

Magdaleno and her colleagues reviewed the electronic medical records of one regional health care system and identified 577 charts of women 18-35 years old with type 1 or type 2 diabetes mellitus with or without complications who had had an office visit with Obstetrics and Gynecology, Internal Medicine, or Family Medicine over a two-year period.

The researchers reviewed the office notes to determine whether the patients had received preconception counseling at the office visit. They also sent anonymous surveys to 524 providers in the system inquiring about the preconception counseling services they provided to women with diabetes.

Based on the 97 (18.5 percent) responses the authors received, providers believed they were providing preconception counseling more often than they actually were.

Overall, among all primary care providers, 39 percent believed that they were regularly (more than 80 percent of the time) providing preconception counseling to their patients with diabetes. In reality, only 18.9 percent of these patients had actually received preconception counseling during an office visit in the past three years. Obstetrics and Gynecology providers discussed preconception counseling more often (36.1 percent) than Internal Medicine (9.8 percent) or Family Medicine (7.1 percent).

"Our survey has revealed the following perceived barriers to preconception counseling: providers' lack of time, the perception that the women should request preconception counseling, and that pregnancies are unplanned," Magdaleno said.

"Organizations providing healthcare to women of childbearing age with diabetes should develop processes to implement higher rates of preconception counseling," she advised. "Based on our physician survey, primary care provider perceptions to barriers of counseling need to be addressed to improve rates of preconception discussions with women of childbearing age with diabetes."

CHICAGO--A new study lends further evidence to a suspected link between abnormal breast growth in young boys--called prepubertal gynecomastia--and regular exposure to lavender or tea tree oil, by finding that key chemicals in these common plant-derived oils act as endocrine-disrupting chemicals. The study results will be presented Monday at ENDO 2018, the Endocrine Society's 100th annual meeting in Chicago.

Lavender and tea tree oil are among the so-called essential oils that have become popular in the United States as alternatives for medical treatment, personal hygiene and cleaning products, and aromatherapy. Various consumer products contain lavender and tea tree oil, including some soaps, lotions, shampoos, hair-styling products, cologne and laundry detergents.

"Our society deems essential oils as safe," said study lead investigator J. Tyler Ramsey, a postbaccalaureate research fellow at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), part of the National Institutes of Health. "However, they possess a diverse amount of chemicals and should be used with caution because some of these chemicals are potential endocrine disruptors."

An endocrine-disrupting chemical is a chemical in the environment that interferes with hormones and their actions in the body.

Male gynecomastia occurring before puberty is relatively rare, but a growing amount of cases have been reported to coincide with topical exposure to lavender and tea tree oil, and the condition went away after the boys stopped using the oil-containing products, Ramsey said. Researchers at the NIEHS, including Kenneth Korach, Ph.D., a co-investigator for the new study, previously found laboratory evidence that lavender and tea tree oil have estrogenic (estrogen-like) properties and anti-androgenic (testosterone inhibiting-like) activities, meaning they compete or hinder the hormones that control male characteristics, which could affect puberty and growth.

Under Korach's direction, Ramsey and his NIEHS colleagues went a step further. From the hundreds of chemicals that comprise lavender and tea tree oil, they selected for analysis eight components that are common and mandated for inclusion in the oils. Four of the tested chemicals appear in both oils: eucalyptol, 4-terpineol, dipentene/limonene and alpha-terpineol. The others were in either oil: linalyl acetate, linalool, alpha-terpinene and gamma-terpinene. Using in vitro, or test tube, experiments, the researchers applied these chemicals to human cancer cells to measure changes of estrogen receptor- and androgen receptor-target genes and transcriptional activity.

All eight chemicals demonstrated varying estrogenic and/or anti-androgenic properties, with some showing high or little to no activity, the investigators reported. Ramsey said these changes were consistent with endogenous, or bodily, hormonal conditions that stimulate gynecomastia in prepubescent boys.

"Lavender oil and tea tree oil pose potential environmental health concerns and should be investigated further," he said.

Of further concern, according to Ramsey, is that many of the chemicals they tested appear in at least 65 other essential oils. Essential oils are available without a prescription and are not regulated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Thus, the public should be aware of these findings and consider all evidence before deciding to use essential oils. The NIEHS Division of Intramural Research funded this study through its support of Korach.

The researchers will present their findings during a press conference at 10 a.m. Central on Saturday, March 17. Register to view the live webcast at endowebcasting.com.

Chicago, IL--New scientific evidence has strengthened the case for reserving testosterone therapy for well-documented cases of hypogonadism, a condition where the body does not produce enough testosterone, Endocrine Society experts concluded in an updated Clinical Practice Guideline released today.

The guideline, entitled "Testosterone Therapy in Men with Hypogonadism: An Endocrine Society Clinical Practice Guideline," was published online today and will appear in the May 2018 print issue of The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism (JCEM), a publication of the Endocrine Society. The availability of new information from some of the largest randomized trials of testosterone, recent improvements in testosterone measurements, combined with the growing public interest in issues related to men's health encouraged the Endocrine Society's initiative to update its testosterone treatment guideline, which was last released in 2010.

The Society debuted the guideline on the opening day of ENDO 2018, its 100th Annual Meeting & Expo. The meeting is taking place in Chicago though March 20.

"In a reflection of the growing attention paid to men's health issues, men's health clinics have mushroomed all over the country," said Shalender Bhasin, M.D., of Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, Mass., and chair of the task force that authored the guideline. "Yet recent surveys indicate many men are prescribed testosterone treatment without an appropriate diagnostic work up or monitoring plan. Some men receiving testosterone therapy do not have adequately documented hypogonadism, while others who have hypogonadism are not receiving the needed treatment."

Testosterone therapy is recommended for hypogonadal men to correct symptoms of testosterone deficiency. Men who are otherwise healthy do not need to be screened for hypogonadism. The guideline calls for avoiding testing and treating healthy men for whom the risks and benefits of testosterone therapy are unclear.

The Society recommends against routinely prescribing testosterone therapy to all men age 65 or older with low testosterone concentrations. The treatment decisions should be individualized and guided by the intensity of symptoms, the presence of other co-morbid conditions, and an explicit discussion with the patient of the long-term risks and benefits of testosterone treatment in older men. The scientific evidence for this recommendation has grown stronger since the 2010 guideline was released.

Men should only be diagnosed with hypogonadism if they display symptoms of a testosterone deficiency and their measurements of total or free testosterone are unequivocally and consistently low. Diagnosing hypogonadism can be challenging because the symptoms are nonspecific and may vary, depending on the individual's age, other medical conditions and factors such as how long the testosterone deficiency has persisted.

Society experts note an individual's testosterone levels can vary greatly over time, so it is important to confirm measurements. About 30 percent of men whose testosterone is measured in the hypogonadal range will have normal concentrations when their levels are retested. In addition, there can be great variability among different testing methods and laboratories. Clinicians should ideally measure total testosterone levels using an assay certified by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's accuracy-based standardization program or one verified by an external quality control program.

"We hope these recommendations will help clarify and dispel much of the misinformation about testosterone therapy," Bhasin said. "With this updated guideline, we were able to incorporate data from some of the most important randomized trials on testosterone conducted during the past three years. Relying on the latest and highest quality scientific evidence will help men and their healthcare providers determine when testosterone treatment is appropriate and when it is unlikely to benefit an individual's health."

Other members of the Endocrine Society task force that developed this guideline include: Juan P. Brito of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.; Glenn R. Cunningham of Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas; Frances J. Hayes of Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, Mass.; Howard N. Hodis of the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, Calif.; Alvin M. Matsumoto of Seattle VA Puget Sound Health Care System in Seattle, Wash.; Peter J. Snyder of the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, Penn.; Ronald S. Swerdloff of Harbor UCLA Medical Center in Torrance, Calif.; Frederick C. Wu of the University of Manchester in Manchester, U.K.; and Maria A. Yialamas of Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, Mass.

The Society established the Clinical Practice Guideline Program to provide endocrinologists and other clinicians with evidence-based recommendations in the diagnosis and treatment of endocrine-related conditions. Each guideline is created by a task force of topic-related experts in the field. Task forces rely on evidence-based reviews of the literature in the development of guideline recommendations. The Endocrine Society does not solicit or accept corporate support for its Clinical Practice Guidelines. All guidelines are supported entirely by Society funds.

The new guideline is co-sponsored by the European Society of Endocrinology.