American scientists are developing computer chips to mimic the human organs to be used for drug development and prevent the death of thousands of laboratory animals.

Reportedly, the five-year long ‘Tissue Chip for Drug Testing’ programme, worth 45 million pounds (USD 70 million), is being funded by three giant US agencies.

Scientists at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University will focus on the multi-organ chip device.

Researchers at Vanderbilt University in Nashville are working on the micro-brain bioreactor, which like the organ chip will contain human cells.

The brain is an especially difficult target for drug development because it puts up multiple natural barriers to potentially toxic molecules.

Each ‘organ’ will be about the size of a computer memory stick. The clear plastic chips contain tiny hollow channels lined with living human cells.

Researchers will also create a ‘microbrain bioreactor’, seeded with human neurons, to mimic the biology of the human brain.

The devices will be used to identify, develop and test novel drugs to treat a host of different diseases.

Presently, much of the drug testing is done on animals, usually rodents. Although there are many biological and genetic similarities between a rodent and a human, there are crucial differences too.

In some cases, adverse reactions or side effects only become apparent during patient trials – or even when a drug is marketed.

Dr Katy Taylor, scientific adviser for the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection, said, “This is an exciting example of how modern-day innovation can produce a humane and more reliable approach to understanding the inner workings of human disease without the need for animal suffering.”

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Scientists have created an artificial mother of pearl by synthesising the strong, iridescent coating found on the inside of some molluscs.

Researchers from Cambridge University manufactured a material which has a similar structure, mechanical behaviour and optical appearance like that of nacre found in nature.

Nacre, known as mother of pearl is the iridescent coatingthat is found on the inside of some molluscs and on the outer coating of pearls.

In order to create the artificial nacre researchers recreated the biological steps that form nacre in molluscs. They ensured the calcium carbonate, which is the primary component of nacre, does not crystallise when precipitating from the solution.

This was done by using a mixture of ions and organic components in the solution that mimics how molluscs control this.

Next, the precipitate layer was covered by an organic layer that had 10-nm wide pores. Finally, crystallisation was induced, and all steps were repeated to create a stack of alternating crystalline and organic layer s.

“Crystals have a characteristic shape that reflects their atomic structure, and it is very difficult to modify this shape. Nature is, however, able to do this, and through our research we were able to gain insight into how it grows these

materials. Essentially, we have created a new recipe for mother of pearl using nature’s cookbook,” Professor Ulli Steiner, of the Department of Physics’ Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge, said in a statement.

“While many composite engineering materials outperform nacre, its synthesis entirely at ambient temperatures in an aqueous environment, as well as its cheap ingredients, maymake it interesting for coating applications. Once optimised,

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Scientists claim that the plot of spiderman movie isn’t as far-fetched as some people might have thought as they were already working on regenerating human organs.

“We’re working on long-term projects to regenerate fingers and limbs,” says Koudy Williams, Professor at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center’s Institute for Regenerative Medicine.

“But we have safer ways to do it than the researchers in Spiderman.” says the self-described “Spiderman geek.

Several of the science themes in Spiderman’s latest adventure from working to harness the body’s natural regenerative powers to making use of natural materials such as the silk in spiderwebs are happening today in regenerative medicine laboratories, Williams added.

Regenerative medicine is a relatively new field of science that works to replace or repair damaged or diseased tissues and organs, a Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center statement said.

“When I was watching the movie, I said to myself, ‘We do that sort of,’” said Williams.

“We do study the regenerative abilities of salamanders and other animals and we try to harness the body’s innate ability to regenerate itself. But we would never combine human and animal genes, we have much safer methods.”

According to Williams, bladders, urine tubes and sections of windpipes have already been built in this way and implanted in humans.

“The body has the capacity to heal naturally,” says Williams. “When there’s an injury, cells release substances known as chemokines that attract other cells to promote healing.”

That’s how a broken bone repairs itself and the outer layer of the eye re-grows if it is scratched. In regenerative medicine, our aim is to boost this natural healing power.

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If a long term research by astronomers is anything to go by, then the centre of our of galaxy tastes like raspberries and smells of rum.

According to a news report, astronomers searching for the building blocks of life in a giant dust cloud at the heart of the Milky Way have concluded that it contains the chemical ethyl formate, which gives raspberries their flavour and smells of rum.

The unanticipated discovery follows years of work by astronomers who trained their 30m radio telescope on the enormous ball of dust and gas in the hope of spotting complex molecules that are vital for life.

Finding amino acids in interstellar space is a Holy Grail for astrobiologists, as this would raise the possibility of life emerging on other planets after being seeded with the molecules.

In the latest survey, astronomers sifted through thousands of signals from Sagittarius B2, a vast dust cloud at the centre of our galaxy.

While they failed to find evidence for amino acids, they did find a substance called ethyl formate, the chemical responsible for the flavour of raspberries.

“It does happen to give raspberries their flavour, but there are many other molecules that are needed to make space raspberries,” Arnaud Belloche, an astronomer at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, told the Guardian.

Curiously, ethyl formate has another distinguishing characteristic: it also smells of rum.

The astronomers used the IRAM telescope in Spain to analyse electromagnetic radiation emitted by a hot and dense region of Sagittarius B2 that surrounds a newborn star.

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A physicist has put forth new ideas to the question of how best to keep dry when moving in the rain.

Franco Bocci has asserted that both wind direction and a person’s stature figure into the answer.

In most cases the general answer is to run as fast as possible, but the answer changes in a tailwind, or for the thin.

What complicates the question is the human shape; for simplicity, previous attempts to crack the thorny problem assumed people to be thin sheets or upright, rectangular boxes.

When Prof Bocci considered a more general case he found that the answer may depend on an individual’s height-to-breadth ratio as well as wind direction and raindrop size.

Luckily there are a few generalisations in the analysis, to spare you having to calculate the cosine of the angle between your path and the wind direction.

“Let’s say that in general, the best thing is to run, as fast as you can – not always, but in general,” the BBC quoted Prof Bocci as saying.

“If you’re really thin, it’s more probable that there will be an optimal speed. Otherwise, it’s better to run fast,” he said.

As for wind direction, in general, you should run as fast as you can unless the wind is behind you, in which case the optimal speed will be exactly the speed of the wind.

The study has been published in the European Journal of Physics.

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Depending on the properties of dark energy that makes up about 70 percent of the current content of the Universe, researchers have proposed several possible scenarios of the ultimate fate of our world.

One is that the Universe will end in a so-called big rip.

Now, five researchers from the University of Science and Technology of China, the Institute of Theoretical Physics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Northeastern University, and Peking University have explored this interesting topic.

For millennia, human beings have been pondering two ultimate questions: “Where do we come from?” and “Where are we going?” Over that time, these questions have spurred theological and philosophical debate. Thanks to the rapid development of modern cosmology in the past three decades, scientists nowadays have obtained some important clues to answer these questions. The standard “inflation plus hot big bang” framework has been developed to explain the origin of the Universe.

However, to forecast the destiny of the Universe, researchers have realized that the nature of dark energy is key.

In the absence of a consensus on what dark energy is, a phenomenological description of the equation-of-state parameter w—the ratio of pressure and density of dark energy—provides an important means for investigating dark energy dynamics.

Properties of dark energy will decide the ultimate fate of the Universe. In particular, if w is less than -1 at some time in the future, dark energy density will grow to infinity in finite time, and its gravitational repulsion will tear apart all the objects in the Universe. This “big rip” (or “cosmic doomsday”) scenario is the major focus of the paper.

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Scientists in the UK have discovered an entirely new species of flatworm which has 60 eyes in a body just 12 mm long.

The creature was found in grassland near Cambridge, with biologists believing it was a “completely new, undescribed species”, the ‘Daily Mail’ reported.

The peculiar invertebrate is thought to be of antipodean descent, often used to refer to Australia and New Zealand, but also a close relative of a species found in Northern Ireland called Kontikia Andersoni.

Biologist Dr Hugh Jones, a scientific associate of the Natural History Museum, said he had only seen one other example of a similar worm, a single specimen discovered in the Netherlands in April.

The 60-eyed worm was discovered by Brian Eversham, chief executive of the Wildlife Trust for Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Northamptonshire.

“It is likely to be a close relative of a species found in Northern Ireland called Kontikia andersoni,” Eversham said.

“Britain is one of the best countries for documenting wildlife so it’s quite unusual to find a species here which has not been seen before,” he was quoted by the paper as saying.

“New Zealand seems to be the centre of diversity for land flatworms worldwide, and its climate is very similar to Britain,” he added.

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UFO sightings in Australia are on the rise, and international studies indicate a growing number of ‘closet believers’ of extraterrestrial life, according to people who track such phenomena.

But people who come forward to report sightings are still pilloried by much of society.

The issue emerged again last week after a video of an alleged UFO sighting over the NSW south coast was posted on YouTube and raised a few sceptics’ eyebrows.

It was no surprise to UFO investigator Doug Moffett, who has been delving into the authenticity of sightings across Australia for more than 20 years.

“That’s the way it is usually treated in the media – like this fun topic to laugh at, rather than being treated as a scientific possibility,” the Daily Telegraph quoted him as saying.

Moffett, part of the UFO Research NSW group, pointed to the fact that there were an estimated 100 billion stars in our galaxy and planets that were billions of years older than ours as reason enough to validate the search for extraterrestrial life.

“What I’m trying to achieve is for people to not knee-jerk dismiss things,” he said.

Central Coast grandmother Jane Pooley hardly fits the stereotype of a UFO believer. But the 51-year-old says she saw one last week.

She described watching a craft with rotating lights moving silently above Brisbane Water, near where she lives – an area recognised as one of Australia’s UFO hotspots.

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Scientists claim to have developed the world’s first complete computer model of an organism, which can use computer-aided design for better diagnosis and treatment of diseases.

A team of Stanford researchers, including an Indian, used data from more than 900 scientific papers to account for every molecular interaction that takes place in the life cycle of Mycoplasma genitalium, the world’s smallest free-living bacterium.

The model represents a stepping-stone toward the use of computer-aided design in bioengineering and medicine, according to the Journal ‘Cell’.

“This achievement demonstrates a transforming approach to answering questions about fundamental biological processes,” said James M Anderson, director National Institutes of Health Division of Program Coordination, Planning and Strategic Initiatives.

“Comprehensive computer models of entire cells have the potential to advance our understanding of cellular function and, ultimately, to inform new approaches for the diagnosis and treatment of disease,” Anderson said.

Biology over the past two decades has been marked by the rise of high-throughout studies producing enormous troves of cellular information.

A lack of experimental data is no longer the primary limiting factor for researchers. Instead, it’s how to make sense of what they already know.

“Many of the issues we’re interested in aren’t single-gene problems,” said Covert, adding “they’re the complex result of hundreds or thousands of genes interacting.”

“This situation has resulted in a yawning gap between information and understanding that can only be addressed by “bringing all of that data into one place and seeing how it fits together,” said Stanford bioengineering graduate student and co-first author Jayodita Sanghvi.

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Renowned theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking has launched the most powerful shared-memory supercomputer in Europe.

Hawking anticipates that the COSMOS supercomputer, manufactured by SGI and the first system of its kind, will open up new windows on the universe, a university release said.

During the launch, which is part of the Numerical Cosmology 2012 workshop at the Centre for Mathematical Sciences at the University of Cambridge, Hawking said, “We have made spectacular advances in cosmology and particle physics recently.”

“Cosmology is now a precision science, so we need machines like COSMOS to reach out and touch the real universe, to investigate whether our mathematical models are correct,” he said.

The COSMOS supercomputer is part of the Science and Technology Facilities Council DiRAC High Performance Computing facility, a national service for UK cosmologists, astronomers and particle physicists, as well as non-academic users.

The Numerical Cosmology 2012 workshop, supported by Intel, has drawn together leaders in computational cosmology with technological innovators.

Hawking added, “I hope that we will soon find an ultimate theory which, in principle, would enable us to predict everything in the universe.”

“However, participants at this workshop will be pleased to learn that this will not end our quest for a complete understanding,” he said.

“Even if we do find the ultimate theory, we will still need supercomputers to describe how something as big and complex as the universe evolves, let alone why humans behave the way they do!”, Hawking said. 

The COSMOS consortium’s current programme of research aims to advance the understanding of the origin and structure of the universe, primarily through the scientific exploitation of the cosmic microwave sky.

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