Hasta La Gadget!

Researchers from UC San Diego have invented what’s described as a microscopic sponge. The tiny sponge is design to circulate in the bloodstream and mop up toxins such as drug-resistant bacterium and even toxins such as snake venom. The researchers call the tiny sponge the nanosponge.

So far, the microscopic sponges have been tested only in mice. The researchers say that the tiny sponge works well when injected into healthy mice that were then infected with a toxin from the strain of Staphylococcus aureus that is resistant to multiple antibiotics. The researchers say that mice that had been injected with the microscopic sponges survived lethal doses of the toxin 89% of the time.

The researchers say that when the sponges were injected after the infection was introduced only about 44% of the mice survived. Researchers have been focusing on tiny sponges of this sort, approximately the size of a virus, as a way to deliver specialized drugs for treatment of certain types of cancer. The researchers are also considering the development of pore-forming toxins that could destroy cells by poking holes in them.

The sponges are hidden from the body by enveloping them in red blood cell membranes. By hiding the sponges inside of a red blood cell membrane, the sponges are able to appear to be regular red blood cells acting as decoys to attract the toxin. The sponges are processed by the liver without causing any damage to the organ.

[via LA Times]

Researchers develop microscopic sponge to soak up toxins in the blood is written by Shane McGlaun & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Ever felt you can’t quite match up to the people you follow on Twitter? While you’re tweeting about that lunchtime cheese sandwich, their feeds are full of elegant witticisms, important-sounding conferences and bungee jumps. Don’t worry, it’s not your fault – your Twitter friends are just more interesting than you. More »

If you figured Titan’s title of the world’s most powerful supercomputer would give the folks at Oakridge National Laboratory reason to rest on their laurels, you’d be mistaken. The computer is set to have its fleet of 18,688 NVIDIA K20 GPUs and equal number of AMD Opteron processors paired with what’s said to be the planet’s speediest storage system, making its file setup six times faster and giving it three times more capacity. Dubbed Spider II, the new hardware will endow the number cruncher with a peak performance of 1.4 terabytes a second and 40 petabytes of storage spread across 20,000 disk drives. Behind the refresh are 36 of Datadirect Networks’ SFA12K-40 systems, which each pack 1.12PB of capacity. For more on the herculean rig’s upgrade, hit the jump for the press release.

Filed under: Misc, Storage, Science

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Transistors were one of the most revolutionary developments in modern computing. And that was without directly implanting them in our brains. Now, the first microscopic organic transistor arrays promise to let us do just that. More »

There are a huge number of people all around the world that are currently very ill and in need of replacement organs. The problem is for some of these people, they will die before a donor organ is available. Scientists around the world are currently working to create alternative ways to get replacement organs for surgical procedures.

One of the methods scientists and researchers are investigating is the ability to grow living organs in a laboratory setting. Scientists in the United States have announced they have been able to successfully grow a rat kidney in the laboratory. The kidney was then transplanted into the rat where it began producing urine.

However, the lab grown kidney is reportedly less effective than a natural kidney. Growing a kidney in the lab is a huge deal because kidneys are the most in-demand organs for transplant and transplant lists for kidneys are some of the longest. The goal of the researchers involved in the project is to be able to take an old kidney and strip it of all the old cells leaving a honeycomb-like scaffolding. The kidney can then be rebuilt with cells taken from the patient.

The major benefit of growing kidney in this manner would be that the cells belong to the patient making rejection less likely. Having cells from the patient will also mean that recipients wouldn’t require immunosuppressive drugs to prevent rejection of the donated organ. Researchers involved in the project face significant challenges in applying this technique to growing human kidneys. The scientists say that the sheer size of the human kidney will be a challenge on its own. The larger an organ, the more difficult it is to get the cells into the correct location according to the researchers.

[via BBC]

Scientists create working lab-grown rat kidney is written by Shane McGlaun & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.