SCIENCE: Energy sources of Cancer were indentified by Korean Team Research.

 

A team of Korean researchers has confirmed that the energy source of cancer cells is fatty acid

A team led by professor Kim Soo-yeol of the Department of Cancer Biology Research confirmed for the first time in the world, that the energy source of cancer cells is fatty acid.

The results of the study were published in the latest issue of Cancers, an international, peer-reviewed Open Access journal and was announced by The National Cancer Center on Sept. 14.

The result overruns a study by German physiologist Otto Warburg who nabbed the Nobel Prize in physiology and medicine in 1931.

Until now, cancer cells have been known to metabolize through a process of decomposing glucose into lactic acid. Based on this research, Otto Warburg took home the Nobel Prize in physiology and medicine in 1931.

Professor Kim's team produced different results from Warburg’s findings through cell and animal tests. When Warburg conducted tests, they used a culture fluid containing only glucose, which led to erroneous results. Kim's team conducted cell tests under conditions similar to those of the human body to confirm that cancer cells use more oxygen and grow faster than normal cells. In this process, the team found out that while the energy source of normal cells is glucose, cancer cells entirely rely on fatty acid oxidation.

In an actual test of mice with pancreatic cancer, cancer incidence dropped fourfold when fatty acids were replaced with carbohydrates.

"The four-fold decrease in cancer incidence just by replacing fatty acids with carbohydrates as the energy source is an effect comparable to cancer treatment," Kim said. "Our research results suggest that new treatments can be introduced based on blocking cancer energy metabolism."

Is a cancer cure around the corner? 

We hope the Korean team will find the way to finally have a real cure for all kind of cancer, in the near future.

---

BK

 

Science: The revolutionary natural material developed in Finland to replace plastic.

One of the great challenges of materials engineering has been to create a product that is strong and extensible at the same time.

Until now, increasing the rigidity of a material meant reducing its extensibility, and vice versa.

However, researchers in Finland have solved the problem by drawing inspiration from nature and biological ingredients to create a truly revolutionary product.

t is a unique combination of materials that exceeds firmness, resistance and extensibility to current synthetic and natural products and that, in addition, is biodegradable.

Wood and cobweb

Technicians and engineers from the Aalto University and the VTT Technical Research Center in Finland, adhered wood cellulose fibers to the cobweb silk protein.

Cobweb silk is one of the most flexible and resistant natural products.

The result is a very firm, elastic and resistant material that could well replace plastic in multiple uses.

Its future applications include biologically based compounds, medical products, surgical fibers, the textile industry, packaging and wrapping.

According to Professor Markus Linder, from Aalto University, nature offers excellent raw materials that are readily available for the development of new materials, such as rigid cellulose and the resistant and flexible silk that were used in the research.

The advantage of both materials is that, contrary to plastic, they are biodegradable and do not harm the environment or constitute a potential health risk such as microplastics.

"Our researchers only need to be able to reproduce these natural properties," said Professor Linder, who also led the research.

materials and methods

One of the natural products they used came from birch, an abundant tree in the forests of northern Europe, which they combined with synthetically cloned silk protein.

The birch (abedul) is an abundant tree in northern Europe.

Wood pulp and silk are biopolymers that demonstrate great potential as future sustainable materials.

They also have properties that complement each other and are suitable for combining in composite materials where cellulose forms the stiffening element and silk the resistant matrix.

"We use birch pulp, disintegrated to obtain nano fibrils and we align them in the form of a firm scaffold. At the same time, we infiltrate that structure with an adhesive web of cobweb silk that is soft and dissipates energy," explained Pezhman Mohammadi, scientist VTT researcher.

Silk is a natural product that is secreted by animals like silkworms and that is also found in cobwebs.

The secret of the web's resistance

However, the silk used by researchers at the University of Aalto was not actually taken from the secretions of these invertebrates but produced by scientists combining bacteria and synthetic DNA.

"As we know the structure of DNA, we can copy it and use it to make silk protein molecules that are chemically similar to those found in the threads of a web," Linder said. "The DNA contains all this information."

The researchers measured the resistance of various combinations of the material.

New compounds

The researchers added that their work illustrates the new and versatile possibilities of protein engineering.

"In the future, we could manufacture similar compounds with slightly different basic materials and achieve a collection of products with different characteristics for other applications," Pezhman Mohammadi said.

"Currently, we are working on the production of new composite materials such as implants, impact resistant objects and other products," the scientist concluded.

The research project is part of a work developed by the Center for Excellence in Molecular Engineering of Biosynthetic Hybrid Materials (Hyber). (I)

17th Century invention is still used in mechanical engineering.

Flash Model Credit: Vladimir Vascack

Micrometer: an engineering marvel

Despite being invented in the 17th century, it is still widely used when it comes to precise measurements in mechanical engineering.

So, in the industry where it is widely used, name has been affectionately shortened to, Mike or Mic!

Science: In the near future your broken phone screen will repair itself in 30 seconds.

The cost of replacing a broken screen is usually high.

 The amazing glass that repairs itself in 30 seconds when it breaks.

It happens even to the most cautious of mortals: at some point, distraction through, the cell phone escapes from the hands and ends up on the floor with the screen shattered.

Replace it is often expensive, so many, if they are lucky that the phone continues to work, prefer to go through life with the screen broken.

But now, a team of Japanese researchers seems to have found a solution to the problem.

Led by Professor Takuzo Aida of the University of Tokyo, they created a new type of crystal that has the ability to repair itself.

Glass, which has the potential to be used for the screen of mobile phones and other fragile devices, is made of a lightweight polymer that recomposes its own breaks when pressed with the hands.

Unlike other previously created materials that "heal" alone, this polymer does not need temperatures in the order of 120º C to reorganize its structure.

It is repaired simply by pressing manually for 30 seconds, at a temperature of 21ºC.

Accidental discovery.

The magnificent properties of the material were discovered by chance by graduate student Yu Yanagisawa, when he was working on the creation of a glue.

Without wanting to, Yanagisawa cut the surface of the polymer.

He almost had no time to mourn the incident, when he noticed that the edges of the broken surface were sticking together again.

The young man repeated the process to check what he had just discovered and noticed that, in addition, the glass recovered its original firmness in a couple of hours.

The new polymer, the researchers said in the study published in the journal Science, is "very robust from the mechanical point of view while it can be quickly repaired by applying pressure on fractured surfaces."

"I hope that the glass that repairs itself becomes a new material friendly to the environment, that you do not need to throw when it breaks," Yanagisawa told the Japanese media NHK.

BBCWorld.

First Object from Earth to Space was teleported by Chinese Scientists

Researchers in China have teleported a photon from the ground to a satellite orbiting more than 500 kilometers above.

Last year, a Long March 2D rocket took off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in the Gobi Desert carrying a satellite called Micius, named after an ancient Chinese philosopher who died in 391 B.C. The rocket placed Micius in a Sun-synchronous orbit so that it passes over the same point on Earth at the same time each day.

Micius is a highly sensitive photon receiver that can detect the quantum states of single photons fired from the ground. That’s important because it should allow scientists to test the technological building blocks for various quantum feats such as entanglement, cryptography, and teleportation.

Today, the Micius team announced the results of its first experiments. The team created the first satellite-to-ground quantum network, in the process smashing the record for the longest distance over which entanglement has been measured. And they’ve used this quantum network to teleport the first object from the ground to orbit.

Teleportation has become a standard operation in quantum optics labs around the world. The technique relies on the strange phenomenon of entanglement. This occurs when two quantum objects, such as photons, form at the same instant and point in space and so share the same existence. In technical terms, they are described by the same wave function.

The curious thing about entanglement is that this shared existence continues even when the photons are separated by vast distances. So a measurement on one immediately influences the state of the other, regardless of the distance between them.

Back in the 1990s, scientists realized they could use this link to transmit quantum information from one point in the universe to another. The idea is to “download” all the information associated with one photon in one place and transmit it over an entangled link to another photon in another place.

This second photon then takes on the identity of the first. To all intents and purposes, it becomes the first photon. That’s the nature of teleportation and it has been performed many times in labs on Earth.

Teleportation is a building block for a wide range of technologies. “Long-distance teleportation has been recognized as a fundamental element in protocols such as large-scale quantum networks and distributed quantum computation,” says the Chinese team.

In theory, there should be no maximum distance over which this can be done. But entanglement is a fragile thing because photons interact with matter in the atmosphere or inside optical fibers, causing the entanglement to be lost.

As a result, the distance over which scientists have measured entanglement or performed teleportation is severely limited. “Previous teleportation experiments between distant locations were limited to a distance on the order of 100 kilometers, due to photon loss in optical fibers or terrestrial free-space channels,” says the team.

But Micius changes all that because it orbits at an altitude of 500 kilometers, and for most of this distance, any photons making the journey travel through a vacuum. To minimize the amount of atmosphere in the way, the Chinese team set up its ground station in Ngari in Tibet at an altitude of over 4,000 meters. So the distance from the ground to the satellite varies from 1,400 kilometers when it is near the horizon to 500 kilometers when it is overhead.

To perform the experiment, the Chinese team created entangled pairs of photons on the ground at a rate of about 4,000 per second. They then beamed one of these photons to the satellite, which passed overhead every day at midnight. They kept the other photon on the ground.

Finally, they measured the photons on the ground and in orbit to confirm  that entanglement was taking place, and that they were able to teleport photons in this way. Over 32 days, they sent millions of photons and found positive results in 911 cases. “We report the first quantum teleportation of independent single-photon qubits from a ground observatory to a low Earth orbit satellite—through an up-link channel— with a distance up to 1400 km,” says the Chinese team.

This is the first time that any object has been teleported from Earth to orbit, and it smashes the record for the longest distance for entanglement.

That’s impressive work that sets the stage for much more ambitious goals in the future. “This work establishes the first ground-to-satellite up-link for faithful and ultra-long-distance quantum teleportation, an essential step toward global-scale quantum internet,” says the team.

It also shows China’s obvious dominance and lead in a field that, until recently, was led by Europe and the U.S.—Micius would surely have been impressed. But an important question now is how the West will respond.

MIT Technology Review. 

Visit Amazon Prime:  http://amazon.com/primeday?tag=worldwidegadg -20

Time travel may no longer be just science fiction.

via GIPHY

Go back five years, get ahead a decade, move around time-space at ease. One of the chimeras of physics, one of the main themes of books and science fiction films. The time machine became an object of worship, an impossible dream that materialized strongly in the saga 'Back to the Future'. However, Marty McFly's adventures in the past, once outlandish, now find a scientific basis.

Two men of science published an article in the Journal and Quantum Gravity in which they propose a mathematical model for a potential time machine. A machine that would allow to move in time-space thanks to the "manipulation" of gravity. 

Ben Tippet and David Tsang argued that beyond the general public to consider travels in time as a science fiction object, "they are mathematically possible." "Our model of a time machine uses the time-space curves caused by gravity so that time is not a straight line," they said in a statement. 

They baptized the possible machine like TARDIS, that by means of its initials in English means Time and Relative Dimensions in the Space, in allusion to the popular ship that they use in the series of British science fiction Doctor Who. In TARDIS one could apply the mathematical formula taken by Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity.

Scientists believe it is feasible to create a bubble in a context where the force of gravity is very high. 

If that bubble is able to reach a speed greater than that of light - possible, according to them - users would travel in time as the ship would move back and forth in a circular path. 

In "flat" space-time, planets and stars move in straight lines. In the vicinity of a massive star, space-time geometry curves and the straight paths of the nearby planets would follow the curvature and bend around the star. "The temporal direction of the space-time surface also shows curvature. There is evidence that the closer we are to a black hole, the slower it moves," Tippett told Science Daily. "My model of a time machine uses curved space-time to bend time in a circle, not in a straight line. That circle goes back in time." 

Beyond enthusiasm, both Tippet and Tsang warned that building such a bubble today is not possible because it would require such extraneous materials that are not yet known. 

"While it is mathematically possible, we still can not build the time machine because we need materials, known as exotic materials, to bend spacetime, which have not yet been discovered," they added. However, the research presents an overcoming method for time travel; An idea that has been studied since 1949.

via GIPHY

South Korean and Chinese scientists has developed a so-called tube resonator to measure microparticles.

A group of South Korean and Chinese scientists has developed a so-called tube resonator that can precisely measure microparticles such as cells and hair, Seoul's science ministry said Thursday.

The team led by Lee Jung-cheol of Sogang University in Seoul developed the glass capillary tube resonator with an electrical readout equipped for mass sensing, the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning said.

 "This paper reports a microfabrication-free approach to make hollow channel mass sensors by pulling a glass capillary and suspending it on top of a machined jig," the report said.

The mass, vibration, and temperature of small particles can be precisely measured by calculating the resonance frequency shift of the structure, officials said.

"A glass capillary tube resonator was developed that can precisely measure microparticles or live single cells," said Lee, forecasting that the discovery will be used in various industries.

The research was funded by the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning and the findings were published in the journal "Scientific Reports."

Science: A “failed experiment” became a life-saving discovery: The Artificial Skin INTEGRA.Video

This is artificial skin INTEGRA and innovation that revolutionized the treatment of burn victims. It was invented to replace the bandages, which cannot seal large damaged areas.

Patient with extensive burns often die, because bandages cannot heal their wounds quickly. Even if patients survived scars are left on their skin.

Artificial skin consists in collagen polymers. Collagen is a protein found in your skin. Artificial skin help patients grow   new skin without forming scars.

It opened a new era in burn treatment and saved thousands of patient lives.

A “failed experiment” became a life-saving discovery by MIT Professor Ioannis V. Yannas and his colleague Dr. John Burke when their search for a better way to treat severe burn victims led to the discovery of organ regeneration — thought impossible by the scientific and medical communities at the time — as well as a brand new field of medicine.

A Life-Saving Discovery at MIT MechE   

Integra^® Dermal Regeneration Template

INTEGRA^® Dermal Regeneration Template is a two-layer skin regeneration system. The outer layer is made of a thin silicone film that acts as your skin's epidermis. It protects the wound from infection and controls both heat and moisture loss. The inner layer is constructed of a complex matrix of cross-linked fibers. This porous material acts as a scaffold for regenerating dermal skin cells, which enables the re-growth of a functional dermal layer of skin. Once dermal skin has regenerated, the silicone outer layer is removed and replaced with a thin epidermal skin graft. This completes the procedure and leaves you with flexible, growing skin.

Benefits of INTEGRA Template include:

• The permanent regeneration of dermal skin
• Thinner skin grafts resulting in less scarring at the donor site
• Faster healing donor sites
• Immediate physiological wound closure without risking the loss of donor material
• Patients can begin rehabilitation with INTEGRA Template in place
• No reports of rejection
• No immediate need to create donor site wounds
• Donor sites heal faster and can be harvested more frequently
• Post excisional use of INTEGRA Template does not require the use of temporary
  coverings such as allograft, xenograft or synthetic dressings

Indications

BURNS: INTEGRA^® Dermal Regeneration Template is indicated for the post-excisional treatment of life threatening full-thickness or deep partial-thickness thermal injuries where sufficient autograft is not available at the time of excision or not desirable due to the physiological condition of the patient. INTEGRA^® Dermal Regeneration Template is indicated for the repair of scar contractures when other therapies have failed, or when donor sites for repair are not sufficient or desirable due to the physiological condition of the patient.

Integra® Dermal Regeneration template is available in the following sizes in both single and 5 pack configuratons:

2 in x 2 in (25 sq cm)

4 in x 5 in (125 sq cm)

4 in x 10 in (250 sq cm)

8 in x 10 in (500 sq cm)

Integra

The drops that reduce eye cataracts.

 A compound  could reduce cataratc eye disease that leads to loss of vision. The magazine Sciencie reported that the product reduces the cloud associated with cataracts, making it a potential treatment for the disease. 

This condition affects more than 20 million people worldwide and is the most common cause of blindness. In many cases it can be treated with surgery, but that option leaves out the people of impoverished countries. 

Cataracts occur when proteins that are located in the lens, called crystal, are damaged, incorrectly folded inside the eye and become insoluble masses. 

Specifically, αA-crystallin (CRYAA) and  αB-crystal (CRYAB), are the  crystal proteins  responsible for the dissolution of other proteins and favoring the formation of age-related cataracts. eye disease that leads to loss of vision. 

Cristalino con problemas por catartas. Foto: Infomedic.com.

To stabilize these proteins, Leah Makled team from the University of Michigan (USA), undertook to identify molecules that were capable of that result. 

 After analyzing 2.450 compounds, it was observed that the mixture 29 was able to fit perfectly between two crystal protein subunits CRYAB, achieving the stabilization. 

The drops could partially reverse cataract in mice and in human samples studied lenses outside the organism. Although it is only a test, the experiment is encouraging for patients with cataracts.

Science: Sahara Desert Dust Feeds Amazon Forests. Video.

The Amazon rainforest and the Sahara desert seem utterly different. Yet NASA satellites have discovered a surprising connection that intimately links these two disparate parts of our planet.

Scientists Suggest: Extraterrestrial Orb Could Be A ‘Seed’ Sent By Aliens.

Could this tiny metallic orb, the latest extraterrestrial finding, be proof of life on other planets or does it reveal something far more sinister? 

The Daily Express reports:

The never-before seen image shows a microscopic metal globe spewing out biological material feared to be an infectious agent.

Though the origin or purpose of the mysterious sphere is uncertain, experts say it could contain genetic material – the precursor to life.

They sensationally claim it could have been designed by an intelligent species to “seed” and propagate alien life on Earth.

It is the first time anything like this has been seen and points not only to the existence of extra-terrestrial life, but to complex and civilised beings watching our planet.

It follows findings that DNA capable of inserting itself into living creatures and replicating can exist in harsh space conditions.

A tiny ‘plasmid’, a circular strand of DNA used in genetic engineering, was sent into space from Sweden in 2011 on the exterior of a TEXUS-49 rocket.

After enduring 1,000C heat it was found to still be intact and with its biological properties when it returned to Earth.

Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe director of the Buckingham Centre for Astrobiology at the University of Buckingham in England, said it is further proof of alien life.

However the latest finding, by Professor Milton Wainwright and his team from the University of Sheffield and the University of Buckingham Centre for Astrobiology, could reveal a much more sinister purpose.

Conjuring images as warned by H.G Wells in his 1898 novel War of the Worlds – it could have been deliberately engineered and sent to Earth to infect the planet.

Professor Wainwright said the structure is made from the metals titanium and vanadium with a “gooey” biological liquid oozing from its centre.

He said there are several theories as to where it came from, the first being it is a complete microorganism programmed to propagate alien life on Earth.

“It is a ball about the width of a human hair, which has filamentous life on the outside and a gooey biological material oozing from its centre,” he said.

“We were stunned when X-ray analysis showed that the sphere is made up mainly of titanium, with a trace of vanadium.

“One theory is it was sent to Earth by some unknown civilisation in order to continue seeding the planet with life.

“This seeming piece of science fiction, called “directed panspermia” would probably not be taken seriously by any scientist were it not for the fact that it was very seriously suggested by the Nobel Prize winner of DNA fame, Sir Francis Crick.

“Unless of course we can find details of the civilisation that is supposed to have sent it in this respect it is probably an unprovable theory.”

Professor Wainwright and his team found the object in dust and particulate matter collected from the stratosphere.

He sent balloons 27km into the sky to collect debris from space and isolated several particles he claims are proof of life in space.

It comes as the mysterious “ghost particle”, also found by Professor Wainwright was revealed and follows the revelation last year of the astonishing “Dragon Particle” the first of its kind to point towards proof of life in space.

Professor Wainwright said the curious orb landed on the sampler balloon it left a tiny impact crater proving it could not have gently fallen from close by.

He said: “On hitting the stratosphere sampler the sphere made an impact crater, a minute version of the huge impact crater on Earth caused by the asteroid said to have killed off the dinosaurs.

“This impact crater proves that the sphere was incoming to Earth from space, an organism coming from Earth would not be travelling fast enough when it fell back to Earth to cause such damage.

“This seems never before to have been found on Earth.”

He said one theory is the object was released deliberately to infect the human race with life-threatening diseases, another is that it travelled millions of miles on a comet.

He said: “For the moment, we are content to say that the life-containing titanium sphere came from space, possibly from a comet.

“NASA is currently sending a balloon into the stratosphere to look for life.

“Hopefully they will get the same results as we have, whether or not they acknowledge what the team have found, or claim the discovery for themselves remains to be seen.”

The findings come as scientists in the UK and Japan launch the ISPA (Institute for the Study of Panspermia and Astroeconomics) which seeks to prove life on Earth originated from Space.

Professor Wickramasinghe, director for research at the institute has long-maintained biological material including bacteria and viruses are constantly raining down from the skies.

He said: “Mainstream science and institutions have fought against theories which expound these beliefs but now evidence from meteorites, from samples of bacteria from space and from space observation is making resistance more difficult.

“Proving that the Earth is in a constant exchange of matter with the larger cosmos would have implications not only in terms of our identity, but could also give us insight into alien viruses which may be important for our group identity, evolution and survival itself.”

yournewswire

US Navy scientists turn seawater into fuel. Will be a game changer. Video.

Francisco De Jesùs.

The US Navy consumes 3 billion galons of fuel per year and that is a fortune. However that scenario will change soon.

The US Navy is turning seawater into fuel. Scientists at the US Naval Research Lab have been able to extract CO2 and hydrogen from the ocean and repackage it in a form of fuel that could one day power the Navy's fleet.

Science: Is E.T sending FRB signals ? Signals from space perplex astronomers.

Science: Is E.T sending FRB signals ? Signals from space perplex astronomers.

Francisco De Jesùs.

Rapid radio bursts were first discovered in 2007 by obervatory Parkes in Australia. Photo: RT News

Upon detection of a series of enigmatic signs that could come from outside our galaxy , astronomers try to understand their nature, without reaching a reliable conclusion .

Rapid bursts radio or Fast Radio Burst (FRB , for its acronym in English ) are bright radio bursts lasting a split second and never repeated, and were first discovered in 2007 by obervatory Parkes in Australia .

As reported in the RT News , the unusual signal was so faint that scientists suggested that the phenomenon came from a distance of billions of light years.

FRB debates about whether signals had a cosmic origin or whether they were more of a unique phenomenon in the location of Parkes due to unusual weather patterns or even product telescope itself unleashed .

FRB Since then there have been at least seven times , including those collected by the Arecibo telescope in Puerto Rico in 2012 , which ruled out the hypothesis of a technical interference.

However, many questions remain about the phenomenon , and from where they travel , how far and what exactly .

For now, the scientists suggest that the possible origins for the phenomenon are young stars of low mass contact, binaries solar mass orbiting so close together that share a common path and a collision of neutron stars.

On the other hand , continue to circulate the hypothesis that extraterrestrial civilizations are those that emit these signals.

"This can be a extraordinary discovery unknown or unusual phenomenon , or it could arise from a network of extraterrestrial communication , showing that the universe is flooded with intelligent life forms ," said Nigel Watson , author of ' UFO Research Manual ' .

Ecuavisa