New Tool Uses Ultrasound ‘Tornado’ to Break Down Blood Clots

Ultrasonic Tornado
Illustration Credit: Xiaoning Jiang / Courtesy of North Carolina State University

Researchers have developed a new tool and technique that uses “vortex ultrasound” – a sort of ultrasonic tornado – to break down blood clots in the brain. The new approach worked more quickly than existing techniques to eliminate clots formed in an in vitro model of cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (CVST).

“Our previous work looked at various techniques that use ultrasound to eliminate blood clots using what are essentially forward-facing waves,” says Xiaoning Jiang, co-corresponding author of a paper on the work. “Our new work uses vortex ultrasound, where the ultrasound waves have a helical wavefront.

“In other words, the ultrasound is swirling as it moves forward,” says Jiang, who is the Dean F. Duncan Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at North Carolina State University. “Based on our in vitro testing, this approach eliminates blood clots more quickly than existing techniques, largely because of the shear stress induced by the vortex wave.”

“The fact that our new technique works quickly is important, because CVST clots increase pressure on blood vessels in the brain,” says Chengzhi Shi, co-corresponding author of the work and an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Georgia Tech. “This increases the risk of a hemorrhage in the brain, which can be catastrophic for patients.

Scientists explain emotional ‘blunting’ caused by common antidepressants

Depression
Photo Credit: Ethan Sykes

According to the NHS, more than 8.3 million patients in England received an antidepressant drug in 2021/22. A widely-used class of antidepressants, particularly for persistent or severe cases, is selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs). These drugs target serotonin, a chemical that carries messages between nerve cells in the brain and has been dubbed the ‘pleasure chemical’.

One of the widely-reported side effects of SSRIs is ‘blunting’, where patients report feeling emotionally dull and no longer finding things as pleasurable as they used to. Between 40-60% of patients taking SSRIs are believed to experience this side effect.

To date, most studies of SSRIs have only examined their short-term use, but, for clinical use in depression these drugs are taken chronically, over a longer period of time. A team led by researchers at the University of Cambridge, in collaboration with the University of Copenhagen, sought to address this by recruiting healthy volunteers and administering escitalopram, an SSRI known to be one of the best-tolerated, over several weeks and assessing the impact the drug had on their performance on a suite of cognitive tests.

In total, 66 volunteers took part in the experiment, 32 of whom were given escitalopram while the other 34 were given a placebo. Volunteers took the drug or placebo for at least 21 days and completed a comprehensive set of self-report questionnaires and were given a series of tests to assess cognitive functions including learning, inhibition, executive function, reinforcement behavior, and decision-making.

Anti-aging gene shown to rewind heart age by 10 years

Centenarian
Photo Credit: Mehmet Turgut Kirkgoz

An anti-aging gene discovered in a population of centenarians has been shown to rewind the heart’s biological age by ten years. The breakthrough, published in Cardiovascular Research and led by scientists at the University of Bristol and the MultiMedica Group in Italy, offers a potential target for patients with heart failure.

Associated with exceptional longevity, carriers of healthy mutant genes, like those living in blue zones of the planet, often live to 100 years or more and remain in good health. These individuals are also less prone to cardiovascular complications. Scientists funded by the British Heart Foundation believe the gene helps to keep their hearts young by protecting them against diseases linked to aging, such as heart failure.

In this new study, researchers demonstrate that one of these healthy mutant genes, previously proved particularly frequent in centenarians, can protect cells collected from patients with heart failure requiring cardiac transplantation.

Avian flu could decimate Australian black swans

Australian black swan
UQ research shows black swans lack some immune genes which help other wild waterfowl combat avian flu.
Photo Credit: Holger Detje

The unique genetics of the Australian black swan leaves the species vulnerable to viral illnesses such as avian flu, University of Queensland research has revealed.

The UQ-led study has generated a first-ever genome of the black swan which revealed the species lacks some immune genes which help other wild waterfowl combat infectious diseases.

Associate Professor Kirsty Short from UQ’s School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences said the geographic isolation of Australia’s black swans has meant limited exposure to pathogens commonly found in other parts of the world leading to reduced immune diversity.

“Unlike Mallard ducks for example, black swans are extremely sensitive to highly pathogenic avian influenza – HPAI which is often referred to as bird flu - and can die from it within three days,” Dr Short said.

Grassland Ecosystems Become More Resilient with Age

In diverse plant communities, evolution increases the division of labor between species over time.
Photo Credit: Alexandra Weigelt

Reduced biodiversity affects the stability of the entire ecosystem. A long-term experiment now shows that grassland plant communities with multiple species need about 10 years to adjust to each other and produce an even amount of biomass again.

Recent experiments have shown that the loss of species from a plant community can reduce ecosystem functions and services such as productivity, carbon storage and soil health. This reduced functioning may also destabilize the ecosystem in its ability to maintain ecosystem functions and services in the long term. However, assessing this is only possible if experiments can be maintained for a sufficient length of time.

Stable biomass production after 10 years

In a new study, researchers from the University of Zurich and colleagues from Leipzig and Jena analyzed the stability of plant biomass production over two decades in one of the longest-running grassland biodiversity experiments in the world, the Jena Experiment in Germany. After more than a decade, plant species in more diverse experimental communities complemented each other in producing stable biomass at the community level. At low plant diversity, by contrast, this “compensatory” effect was observed and community biomass varied much more from year to year. During the first decade of the experiment, species-rich communities had not yet stabilized because of large fluctuations in species populations. This long-term research shows that biodiversity plays an increasingly important role in stabilizing ecosystem productivity over time as plant communities mature.

Stanford Medicine researchers measure thousands of molecules from a single drop of blood

A single drop of blood can yield measurements for thousands of proteins, fats and other biomarkers, researchers at Stanford Medicine found.
Photo Credit: PublicDomainPictures

Researchers at Stanford Medicine have shown they can measure thousands of molecules — some of which are signals of health — from a single drop of blood.

The new approach combines a microsampling device — a tool used to self-administer a finger prick — with “multi-omics” technologies, which simultaneously analyze a vast array of proteins, fats, by-products of metabolism and inflammatory markers.

“Even more importantly, we’ve shown you can collect the blood drop at home and mail it into the lab,” said Michael Snyder, PhD, director of the Center for Genomics and Personalized Medicine and senior author on the research, which was published in Nature Biomedical Engineering on Jan. 19.

Unlike finger-prick testing for diabetes, which measures a single type of molecule (glucose), multi-omics microsampling gives data about thousands of different molecules at once.

The research sounds similar to a well-known approach promoted in the past for testing a single drop of blood, but there are important differences: While the earlier approach was based on replicating existing diagnostic tests, multi-omic microsampling uses a different type of data analysis based on a technology called mass spectrometry, which sorts molecules based on their mass and electronic charge. In addition, the data analysis is performed in a lab, not in a portable box.

Removing water, stains, contaminants with hydrogel beads

Snapshots of the hydrogel bead impacting the droplet causing the droplet to lift off the surface.
Photo Credit: Courtesy of University of Hawaiʻi

There may be a more efficient future for water repellent materials and methods thanks to new research from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa College of Engineering. Associate Professor John S. Allen III and an international team of researchers have discovered a method to remove liquid from non-stick surfaces using hydrogel beads, a material similar to gel cap medications.

“Ever want to remove a puddle completely without touching it? How about removing staining coffee off your clothes? Do you know that all the dangerous contaminants are off the surface? All these might be facilitated with low-cost hydrogel beads in the future,” Allen explained.

For a variety of everyday and industrial waterproof/water resistant objects, it is important to reduce the contact time of an impacting water or liquid drop with the surface. Many people are familiar with water repellent coating on buildings and on clothing. Repellants are also used to mitigate icing on a plane, as bouncing droplets are less likely to have time to freeze.

Traded species have distinctive life histories with extended reproductive lifecycles

Chameleon
Invasive species can cause huge environmental problems and monetary costs
Photo Credit: Pierre Bamin

A new study by researchers from Durham University, UK, Queen’s University Belfast, UK, University of Extremadura, Spain and Swansea University, UK have revealed that vertebrate species involved in the live wildlife trade have distinctive life history traits, biological characteristics that determine the frequency and timing of reproduction.

Researchers discovered that traded species produce large numbers of offspring across long reproductive lifespans, an unusual profile that is likely financially advantageous for trades involving captive breeding such as the pet, food and fur/skin trades.

Traded species that have also been introduced into non-native areas have a more extreme version of this same life history profile, suggesting that species most likely to become problematic invaders are at a heightened risk of trade and release.

The study suggests that humans favor species with high reproductive output for trade and release, which are the very species likely to become problematic invaders in future.

Researchers point out that life history traits are therefore potentially useful for predicting future invasions.

DARPA Selects Aurora Flight Sciences for Phase 2 of Active Flow Control X-Plane

DARPA CRANE X-Plane configuration in development for flight testing Active Flow Control (AFC) technologies
Image Credit: Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency

DARPA has selected Aurora Flight Sciences to move into the detailed design phase of the Control of Revolutionary Aircraft with Novel Effectors (CRANE) program. This follows successful completion of the project’s Phase 1 preliminary design, which resulted in an innovative testbed aircraft that used active flow control (AFC) to generate control forces in a wind tunnel test. Phase 2 will focus on detailed design and development of flight software and controls, culminating in a critical design review of an X-plane demonstrator that can fly without traditional moving flight controls on the exterior of the wings and tail.

The contract includes a Phase 3 option in which DARPA intends to fly a 7,000-pound X-plane that addresses the two primary technical hurdles of incorporation of AFC into a full-scale aircraft and reliance on it for controlled flight. Unique features of the demonstrator aircraft will include modular wing configurations that enable future integration of advanced technologies for flight testing either by DARPA or potential transition partners.

Sikorsky Delivers 5,000th “Hawk,” Highlights Versatility And Future Of Iconic Helicopter

Sikorsky marks the delivery of the 5,000th “Hawk” helicopter, a UH-60M (pictured), at its headquarters in Stratford, Conn., Jan. 20, 2023.
Resized Image using AI by SFLORG
Photo Credit: Courtesy Sikorsky, a Lockheed Martin company.

Sikorsky, a Lockheed Martin company (NYSE: LMT), today delivered its 5,000th “Hawk” variant helicopter, a U.S. Army UH-60M Black Hawk. The iconic aircraft will continue to support medium-lift requirements for the U.S. military and international operators for decades into the future.

Sikorsky celebrates its 100th anniversary this year.

“Sikorsky, as a company, has been forged by the Black Hawk,” said Sikorsky President Paul Lemmo. “The Black Hawk and its variants deliver when reliability and performance are nonnegotiable. Hawk aircraft continue to demonstrate their versatility and readiness with the latest technological advancements and ongoing U.S. and global investment in the aircraft.”

Customers worldwide depend on the Black Hawk platform and its derivatives, including MH-60R/S maritime operations helicopters, MH-60T multi-mission helicopters, HH-60W rescue helicopters and internationally built S-70 Black Hawks to include the baseline FIREHAWK, which have all proven their versatility and capability across a spectrum of challenging mission sets.

Ripples in the fabric of the universe may reveal the start of time

Numerical simulation of the neutron stars merging to form a black hole, with their accretion disks interacting to produce electromagnetic waves.
Illustration Credit: L. Rezolla (AEI) & M. Koppitz (AEI & Zuse-Institut Berlin

Scientists have advanced in discovering how to use ripples in space-time known as gravitational waves to peer back to the beginning of everything we know. The researchers say they can better understand the state of the cosmos shortly after the Big Bang by learning how these ripples in the fabric of the universe flow through planets and the gas between the galaxies.

“We can’t see the early universe directly, but maybe we can see it indirectly if we look at how gravitational waves from that time have affected matter and radiation that we can observe today,” said Deepen Garg, lead author of a paper reporting the results in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics. Garg is a graduate student in the Princeton Program in Plasma Physics, which is based at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL).

Garg and his advisor Ilya Dodin, who is affiliated with both Princeton University and PPPL, adapted this technique from their research into fusion energy, the process powering the sun and stars that scientists are developing to create electricity on Earth without emitting greenhouse gases or producing long-lived radioactive waste. Fusion scientists calculate how electromagnetic waves move through plasma, the soup of electrons and atomic nuclei that fuels fusion facilities known as tokamaks and stellarators.

Unprecedented Levels of High-Severity Fire Burn in Sierra Nevada Forests

A firefighter helps containment efforts during the Creek Fire response in 2020.
Photo Credit: USDA, Pacific Southwest Forest Service

High-severity wildfire is increasing in Sierra Nevada and Southern Cascade forests and has been burning at unprecedented rates compared to the years before Euro-American settlement, according to a study from the Safford Lab at the University of California, Davis, and its collaborators. Those rates have especially shot up over the past decade. 

For the study, published in the journal Ecosphere, scientists analyzed fire severity data from the U.S. Forest Service and Google Earth Engine, across seven major forest types. 

They found that in low- and middle-elevation forest types, the average annual area that burned at low-to-moderate severity has decreased from more than 90% before 1850 to 60-70% today. 

At the same time, the area burned annually at high severity has nearly quintupled, rising from less than 10% to 43% today. (High-severity burns are those where more than 95% of aboveground tree biomass is killed by fire.)

Getting under your skin for better health

UC College of Engineering and Applied Science professor Jason Heikenfeld in his Novel Devices Lab.
 Photo Credit: Andrew Higley/UC Marketing + Brand

The next frontier of continuous health monitoring could be skin deep.

Biomedical engineers at the University of Cincinnati say interstitial fluid, the watery fluid found between and around cells, tissues or organs in the body, could provide an excellent medium for early disease diagnosis or long-term health monitoring.

In a paper published in the journal Nature Biomedical Engineering, they outlined the potential advantages and technological challenges of using interstitial fluid.

“Why we see it as a valuable diagnostic fluid is continuous access. With blood, you can’t easily take continuous readings,” said UC doctoral graduate Mark Friedel, co-lead author of the study.

“Can you imagine going about your day with a needle stuck in your vein all day? So, we need other tools.”

RUDN University chemist creates nanocatalysts for vanillin synthesis

Illustration Credit: RUDN University

RUDN University chemist proposed a new method to create catalysts on a porous silicon matrix with metal nanoparticles. Efficient catalysts for organic reactions are obtained, for example, for the synthesis of vanillin, which is in demand in the food and perfume industry.

Only 1% of the annually produced worldwide 20 thousand tons of vanillin is made from natural vanilla. Almost all vanillin in seasonings, pastries, pharmaceuticals and cosmetics is synthesized by chemical protocols. Usually, petrochemical raw materials are used for this, but synthesis from inexpensive plant biomass is also possible. The main ingredient is lignin. This polymer is widely available as it is part of the trees, and it is obtained in the production of paper as a by-product. It is easy to isolate eugenol and other substances suitable for the synthesis of vanillin from lignin, but the next step is challenging. In oxidation reactions, along with vanillin, several by-products similar to it in structure are formed. It is difficult to separate them. The RUDN University chemist proposed a number of eco-friendly nanocatalysts that will allow obtaining more vanillin from plant raw materials than traditional methods.

MIT researchers develop an AI model that can detect future lung cancer risk

Caption:Researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital and MIT stand in front of a CT scanner at MGH, where some of the validation data was generated. Left to right: Regina Barzilay, Lecia Sequist, Florian Fintelmann, Ignacio Fuentes, Peter Mikhael, Stefan Ringer, and Jeremy Wohlwend
 Photo Credit: Guy Zylberberg.

The name Sybil has its origins in the oracles of Ancient Greece, also known as sibyls: feminine figures who were relied upon to relay divine knowledge of the unseen and the omnipotent past, present, and future. Now, the name has been excavated from antiquity and bestowed on an artificial intelligence tool for lung cancer risk assessment being developed by researchers at MIT's Abdul Latif Jameel Clinic for Machine Learning in Health, Mass General Cancer Center (MGCC), and Chang Gung Memorial Hospital (CGMH).

Lung cancer is the No. 1 deadliest cancer in the world, resulting in 1.7 million deaths worldwide in 2020, killing more people than the next three deadliest cancers combined. 

"It’s the biggest cancer killer because it’s relatively common and relatively hard to treat, especially once it has reached an advanced stage,” says Florian Fintelmann, MGCC thoracic interventional radiologist and coauthor on the new work. “In this case, it’s important to know that if you detect lung cancer early, the long-term outcome is significantly better. Your five-year survival rate is closer to 70 percent, whereas if you detect it when it’s advanced, the five-year survival rate is just short of 10 percent.”