Device Replicates Complex Bird Songs

A team of researchers, including Shreyas Mandre, have developed a simple rubber device that is able to replicate many different bird songs. The device may provide insight into how young birds learn songs from adults. Mandre is also working on a mathematical model to see if it is possible to identify some of the key principles in producing complex birdsong.

Full report online: www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12093906

Simple rubber device mimics complex bird-song

By Mark KinverScience and environment reporter, BBC News

A simple rubber device that replicates complex bird songs has been developed by a team of US researchers.Continue reading the main story

The song is produced by blowing air through the device, which mimics a bird's vocal tract, the team explained.

The findings appear to challenge the idea that birds had to learn complicated neurological controls in order to produce distinctive calls.

The project's "holy grail" was replicating
the complex song of the zebra finch

The team plans to share its data with biologists to see if it sheds new light on how birds produce complex songs.

"I definitely did not think that I would be able to produce a whole bird song when we started," explained Aryesh Mukherjee, a member of the project team from Harvard University.

"We were just playing around and I probed the device in a certain way and it started playing a bird song - that was very exciting."

He added that the design of the device was very rudimentary: "It is made out of two pieces of rubber, which are stuck together but leaving a little area in the middle that forms the 'vocal tract'."

As well as the air source, the device is pressed together by a motor that replicates the action of a contracting muscle.

"In the terms of physics, the tract is just an elastic membrane of springs. If you tense it correctly, and probe it in a certain way, it starts vibrating," Mr Mukherjee told BBC News.

"Our project was to control the frequency of those vibrations."

The team were able to replicate a number of bird-songs, such as Bengalese finches and vireos, and were able to closely model the song of zebra finches.

"Making it sound like a zebra finch is the holy grail of the project," Mr Mukherjee said.

"We have been able to come pretty close to it, but we have been able to replicate other bird species much better."

He suggested that the song of the zebra finch was a little bit more complex, therefore it required a little fine tuning.

"But we are getting close," he added.

Good vibrations

The team's discovery was made during a project to learn more about the physical behaviour of vocal tracts.

"It was considered a very complicated process, and we tried to uncover some of the mysteries with physics.""We were working with neuroscientists who were trying to understand how a bird learns to sing.

Bird-song, a complex sound full of intricate patterns and rich harmonies, has been the subject of many studies. Neuroscientists, over the years, have provided insights into how young birds learn their songs from adult birds, requiring a series of complex neurological changes in order for them to control their voices.

But Mr Mukherjee said the project's results showed that it was possible to replicate bird-song without high degrees of control inputs.

"By just having one muscle (motor pressing the device) in the equation, you can get a lot of sounds," he explained.

The surprisingly simple design was able to replicate
complex birdsong of a range of species

"Translating that back into the idea of neurological control... it suggests that the control needed to produce seemingly complex songs is not as challenging as previously thought."

However, Mr Mukherjee said that whether this challenges current thinking on how birds produce their song was outside their area of expertise.

"We are in no position to make a claim about what this has to do with bio-physics or neurological control within birds. All we can say is what we have learned from our experiments, and share that information with biologists.

Another member of the team Shreyas Madre - now an assistant professor at Brown University, Rhode Island - is developing a mathematical model to see if it is possible to identify some of the key principles in producing complex birdsong.

The team plans to publish its findings in a paper in the near future.

Time Magazine Calls Artificial Ovary Developed by Brown University Researchers One of Top 10 Medical Breakthroughs

Time Magazine's Top 10 Medical Breakthroughs of 2010

9. Artificial Ovary

By Alice Park 

RALF HIRSCHBERGER / EPA / CORBIS

In more good news for those struggling with infertility, scientists reported success in creating an artificial ovary that could one day nurture immature human eggs outside the body. Researchers led by a team at Brown University managed to coax three primary ovary cells donated by patients into a 3-D structure resembling an ovary. In the lab, the cell types interacted with one another and functioned for all intents and purposes like a real ovary, even successfully maturing a human egg from its earliest stages in the follicle to a fully developed form.

Most immediately, the structure could help IVF technicians improve success rates. Currently when women donate eggs for a cycle of IVF, they provide a range of both mature and immature eggs; the less developed ones are less likely to be fertilized to become embryos. But by allowing technicians to mature these eggs in the lab, researchers might be able to help each IVF cycle become more efficient in leading to a pregnancy and eventual life birth. In addition, the artificial ovary could help women with ovarian disease, who are unable to produce mature eggs, take advantage of IVF to have children of their own.

Researchers build ‘artificial ovary’ to develop oocytes into mature human eggs

Researchers at Brown University and Women and Infants Hospital of Rhode Island have built an artificial human ovary that can grow oocytes into mature human eggs in the laboratory. That development, reported in the Journal of Assisted Reproduction and Genetics, could help preserve fertility for women facing chemotherapy or other treatments.

An artificial ovaryAn engineered honeycomb of cultured theca cells
(top row) envelopes spheres of granulosa cells (GC).
The bottom row shows the tissue after 48 hours (left)
and after five days.Credit: Carson Lab / Brown University

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Researchers at Brown University and Women and Infants Hospital have invented the first artificial human ovary, an advance that provides a potentially powerful new means for conducting fertility research and could also yield infertility treatments for cancer patients. The team has already used the lab-grown organ to mature human eggs.

“An ovary is composed of three main cell types, and this is the first time that anyone has created a 3-D tissue structure with triple cell line,” said Sandra Carson, professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University and director of the Division of Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility at Women and Infants Hospital. Carson is a senior author of a recent article in the Journal of Assisted Reproduction and Genetics that describes the innovation.

Carson said that the ovary not only provides a living laboratory for investigating fundamental questions about how healthy ovaries work, but also can act as a testbed for seeing how problems, such as exposure to toxins or other chemicals, can disrupt egg maturation and health.

Clinically, the artificial ovary could play a role in preserving the fertility of women facing cancer treatment in the future, said Stephan Krotz, a Houston fertility doctor who is the paper’s lead author and a former fellow in Carson’s lab. Immature eggs could be salvaged and frozen before the onset of chemotherapy or radiation, he said, and then matured outside the patient in the artificial ovary.

Building an ovary

What makes the artificial ovary a functional tissue, rather than just a cell culture, is that it brings all three ovarian cell types into a 3-D arrangement similar to a real ovary in the body. The means for making such compositions of cells was invented in the lab of Jeffrey Morgan, associate professor of medical science and engineering, who is a co-author of the paper published online Aug. 25. His so-called 3D Petri dishes are made of a moldable agarose gel that provides a nurturing template to encourage cells to assemble into specific shapes.

To create the ovary, the researchers formed honeycombs of theca cells, one of two key types in the ovary, donated by reproductive-age (25-46) patients at the hospital. After the theca cells grew into the honeycomb shape, spherical clumps of donated granulosa cells were inserted into the holes of the honeycomb together with human egg cells, known as oocytes. In a couple days the theca cells enveloped the granulosa and eggs, mimicking a real ovary.

The big test, however, was whether the structure could function like an ovary — namely to mature eggs. In experiments the structure was able to nurture eggs from the “early antral follicle” stage to full maturity.

“[This] represents the first success in using 3-D tissue engineering principles for in vitro oocyte maturation,” the researchers wrote in the journal article.

Carson said her goal was never to invent an artificial organ, per se, but merely to create a research environment in which she could study how theca and granulosa cells and oocytes interact. When she learned of Morgan’s 3-D Petri dishes, they began to collaborate on creating an organ. Morgan said this is the first fully functional tissue to be made using the method.

To help fund the work, Morgan and Carson applied for and won a Collaborative Research Award from the Rhode Island Science and Technology Advisory Council (STAC). STAC grants encourage research with commercial potential. Morgan has recently founded a local Rhode Island startup, MicroTissues Inc. The company will begin selling these micro-mold tools in about a month to researchers looking to engineer 3-D tissues. Other funding came from Women and Infants Hospital.

With what appears to be a fully functional artificial organ, Carson and Morgan continue to collaborate and are now embarking on the studies she dreamed it would make possible. She’s reluctant to predict what they’ll turn up, however.

“This is really very, very new,” she said.

The paper’s other authors are Jared Robins, Toni-Marie Ferruccio, Richard Moore and Margaret Steinhoff, all of Brown University.

Robot Reveals Unusual Fish’s Movement

A team of researchers, including Oscar Curet, postdoctoral research associate in engineering, have developed a robot that mimics the movement of the black ghost knifefish. Called the GhostBot, the machine reveals how the finless fish maneuvers through the murky waters of the Amazon Basin. “Animals usually never behave the way you need them to do while studying their movements. With robotics that mimic animal movement, you do something over and over again without hurting the animal,” Curet says.

Black Ghost Knifefish Robot Unmasks Movement Secrets

• By Dave Mosher, Wired 

Borrowing biological designs from the black ghost knifefish, engineers have built a swimming robot that reveals how the animal’s trick of vertical movement works.

Called GhostBot, the robot copies the real fish’s undulating, ribbon-like ventral fin to propel itself through the water. New high-speed experiments show how, when waves travel along the robot’s ribbon from head to tail and meet in the middle, mushroom-cloud-like jets can push it upward.

“These fish are extremely maneuverable, and we knew how they move forward and backward with their fins,” said bioengineer Malcolm MacIver of Northwestern University, who led GhostBot’s design. “What we didn’t know was how they move vertically.”

The black ghost knifefish lives in the rivers of the Amazon Basin, using a self-generating electric field to see through the murky waters. It doesn’t have traditional fins like a bony fish, nor does it sway its body like an eel to move around. Instead, it stays rigid and uses a ribbon-like fin along its belly to navigate through a maze of downed trees, stones and other underwater obstructions with extreme precision.

Emulating such maneuverability in robotic submersibles would create countless opportunities for new or more robust underwater research, says MacIver, co-author of a study detailing the vertical movement mechanics in an upcoming issue of the Journal of the Royal Society Interface. An efficient, submersible hovering robot, for example, could constantly monitor the health of a coral reef without crashing into it (most researchers hire costly divers to do the work).

“I don’t agree that nature always has the best designs, but this is a place where it’s way ahead of human technology,” MacIver said.

When a knifefish moves upward in water, it rolls two opposing waves down its fin that meet in the middle. How that action generates upward thrust — which the dense fish needs, otherwise it’d sink — was a puzzle until the research team, including mechanical engineer Oscar Curet (now at Brown University), decided to build a copycat robot.

“Animals usually never behave the way you need them to do while studying their movements,” Curet said. “With robotics that mimic animal movement, you do something over and over again without hurting the animal.”

To reveal how the black ghost and other knifefish move vertically, the scientists worked with a company called Kinea Design to build GhostBot. It took them about seven months and $200,000 to complete a finished version.

They put the forearm-sized device into a special tank able to reveal the fluid mechanics near the fin. It flowed water laced with shiny particles over the swimming robot, shined a laser-beam plane onto the ribbon fin and took footage with high-speed cameras. Computer algorithms then processed the images to map particle velocities.

“While swimming upward, two opposing jets of water meet in the middle and collide. The merged jets deflect downward and push up on the fish,” Curet said. The animal can modulate the jets to move in diagonal directions as well, he says.

“This kind of ribbon fin is something worth paying attention to, because it has independently evolved around the world many times,” said Noah Cowan, a biologist and mechanical engineer at Johns Hopkins University who wasn’t involved in the study. “It’s a very robust design by nature, and these particular animals can move with very little body bending. It may be good for moving a rigid submersible robot.”

A major robotics company interested in developing autonomous submersibles is already discussing how they can use the design, MacIver says. Attaching ribbon-like mechanical fins to submarines people fit into, however, is another matter.

“It sounds fantastic for autonomous submersibles, but we may never use it. The design seems too fragile to sit on the ocean floor, which is what customers sometimes do with our submarines,” said Patrick Lahey, president of Triton Sumarines. “For safety reasons, we have to adhere to tried and tested technologies.”

In addition to GhostBot’s unusual means of swimming, MacIver says it’s also packed with sensors emulating the real animal’s electrosensing abilities.

“They basically use their body as a big eye,” he said. “We want to connect the robot’s swimming to its sensor network and show it can autonomously find an object we want, then hover to say, ‘here it is.’”

Videos: 1) High-speed footage of a swimming black ghost knifefish, the submersible GhostBot, and fluid mechanics experiments performed on the device. Credit: Journal of the Royal Society Interface. 2) A black ghost knifefish swims in strange directions to find and eat food. Credit: YouTube.

Image: Fluid mechanics models showing how the black ghost knifefish’s vertical jets form and push upward on its body. Credit: Journal of the Royal Society Interface.

Twenty-three Students Inducted into Tau Beta Pi

Tau Beta Pi, the engineering honor society, inducted 23 new members into the Rhode Island Alpha chapter at Brown University on Saturday, December 4. Fourteen juniors were inducted along with eight seniors and one graduate student.

Among the 14 juniors elected were: James Arthur Bensson ’12, Brian John Bierig ’12, Michael Caron ’12, Mark Andrew Guttag ’12, Warren Bruce Jin ’12, Yosuke Korokawa ’12, Francis Liu ’12, Alec Roelke ’12, Wichinpong Sinchaisri ’12, Dingyi Sun ’12, Kathryn Ries Tringale ’12, Lingke Wang ’12, and Brent Zajaczkowski ’12.

The eight seniors elected included: Jake Lipton Albert ’11, Brendan James Checkett ’11, Kevin Thomas Durfee ’11, Martin Fagan Finn ’11, Margaret Helen Henderson Merritt ’11, Christopher Casey Moynihan ’11, Nikolas Jurjans Osvalds ’11, Daniel P. Prendergast ’11, and Theresa Marie Raimondo ’11.

Gregory James Rizza Ph.D.’12 was the graduate student elected.
 
Tau Beta Pi, founded in 1885, is the second oldest Greek-letter honor society in America; the oldest is Phi Beta Kappa. While Phi Beta Kappa is restricted to students in the liberal arts, Tau Beta Pi is designed to “offer appropriate recognition for superior scholarship and exemplary character to students in engineering.” In order to be inducted into the prestigious honor society, juniors must rank in the top eighth of their class and seniors must rank in the top fifth of their class. Graduate students who have completed at least 50% of their degree requirements and who rank in the top fifth of their class are also eligible to become candidates for membership.
 
The Rhode Island Alpha chapter is not only an honor society to pay tribute to outstanding students, it also provides a vehicle for these students to assume a role of leadership at Brown and to be of distinctive service. Tau Beta Pi members are active in engineering student publications, the engineering recruiting project, and in a variety of other organizations. 

Malaria-infected cells stiffen, block blood flow

A team of researchers at Brown University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has completed the first modeling, followed by experiments, of how red blood cells are infected by a malarial parasite that attacks the brain. The researchers report that infected cells stiffen by as much as 50 times more than healthy cells. Infected cells also tend to stick along blood vessel walls, impeding the flow of blood to critical organs. Results appear in the early online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Less elastic, more viscousThe malaria parasite inside a red blood cell, left, and
 in a computer-generated model. Malarial infection
 inhibits the smooth flow of blood through capillaries.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Although the incidence of malaria has declined in all but a few countries worldwide, according to a World Health Organization report earlier this month, malaria remains a global threat. Nearly 800,000 people succumbed to the mosquito-borne disease in 2009, nearly all of them in the developing world.

Physicians do not have reliable treatment for the virus at various stages, largely because no one has been able to document the malaria parasite’s journeys in the body.

Now researchers at Brown University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have used advanced computer modeling and laboratory experiments to show how malaria parasites change red blood cells and how the infected cells impede blood flow to the brain and other critical organs.

Their findings, published in the early online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, could help doctors chart, in real time, the buildup in the body of cells infected with malaria or other diseases (such as sickle-cell anemia) and to prescribe treatment accordingly.

“The idea is to predict the evolution of these diseases, just like we predict the weather,” said George Karniadakis, professor of applied mathematics at Brown and corresponding author on the paper.

---

Impeding forward progress
Malaria-infected red blood cells can be 50 times stiffer and have surface changes that disrupt the smooth flow of blood, depriving the brain and other organs of nutrients and oxygen. (Computer simulation by the Karniadakis Lab)

---

The researchers worked withPlasmodium falciparum, a parasite that can cause cerebral malaria by lodging in capillaries of the brain, especially among children. The parasite is found globally but is most common in Africa.

Once introduced into the human body by an infected mosquito’s bite, the parasite invades red blood cells. Healthy red blood cells are tremendously elastic; even though they can reach 8 microns in length and 2 microns in thickness, they can easily slide through a capillary just 3 microns in diameter. Capillaries are vital conduits in the human brain and other organs; red blood cells are key transporters of oxygen and nutrients.

Through extensive modeling carried out on one of the world’s fastest supercomputers at the National Institute for Computational Sciences, Karniadakis and colleagues found that malaria-infected red blood cells stiffened as much as 50 times more than healthy red blood cells. The result: Infected red blood cells, having lost their elasticity, could no longer pass through capillaries, effectively blocking them.

“Basically what happens is the brain could be deprived of nutrients and oxygen,” said Karniadakis, a member of the Center for Fluid Dynamics, Turbulence and Computation at Brown. “This happens because of the deformation of these red blood cells.

“This shows that as stiffening increases (in red blood cells), the viscosity of the blood increases, and the heart has to pump twice as much sometimes to get the same blood flow,” Karniadakis added.

The researchers also found that infected red blood cells had a tendency to stick, flip, and flop along the walls of blood vessels — unlike healthy blood cells that flow in the middle of the channel. For reasons not entirely known, the infected red blood cells develop little knobby protrusions on their cellular skin that tend to stick to the surface of the blood wall, known as the endothelium. Scientists call the sticking cytoadhesion.

“So, what happens is the infected red blood cell is not only stiffer, it’s slowed down by this interaction (cytoadhesion),” Karniadakis said. “This drastically changes the flow of blood in the brain, especially in the arterials and in the capillaries.”

Dimitry Fedosov, first author on the paper, worked on the research as a graduate student at Brown. He is now a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Solid State Research in Germany. Bruce Caswell, professor emeritus in the School of Engineering at Brown, contributed to the research. Subra Suresh, former dean of the engineering school at MIT and now director of the National Science Foundation, also contributed to the research.

The National Institutes of Health and the NSF funded the research.

How do you cut a nanotube? Lots of compression

Researchers at Brown University and in Korea have described the dynamics behind cutting single-walled carbon nanotubes, cylindrical structures just 1/50,000th the width of a human hair. The tubes are compressed by potent sonic booms, causing them to buckle at certain points at helical, 90-degree angles. The finding could lead to better-quality nanotubes for potential use in automotive, electronics, optics and other fields. Results appear in the Proceedings of the Royal Society A.

Sound of slicing
High-intensity atomic-level sonic boomlets cause
nanotubes to buckle and twist at “compression-
concentration zones.”Credit: Kim Lab/Brown University

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — A pipefitter knows how to make an exact cut on a metal rod. But it’s far harder to imagine getting a precise cut on a carbon nanotube, with a diameter 1/50,000th the thickness of a human hair.

In a paper published this month in the British journal Proceedings of the Royal Society A, researchers at Brown University and in Korea document for the first time how single-walled carbon nanotubes are cut, a finding that could lead to producing more precise, higher-quality nanotubes. Such manufacturing improvements likely would make the nanotubes more attractive for use in automotive, biomedicine, electronics, energy, optics and many other fields.

“We can now design the cutting rate and the diameters we want to cut,” said Kyung-Suk Kim, professor of engineering in the School of Engineering at Brown and the corresponding author on the paper.

The basics of carbon nanotube manufacturing are known. Single-atom thin graphene sheets are immersed in solution (usually water), causing them to look like a plate of tangled spaghetti. The jumbled bundle of nanotubes is then blasted by high-intensity sound waves that create cavities (or partial vacuums) in the solution. The bubbles that arise from these cavities expand and collapse so violently that the heat in each bubble’s core can reach more than 5,000 degrees Kelvin, close to the temperature on the surface of the sun. Meanwhile, each bubble compresses at an acceleration 100 billion times greater than gravity. Considering the terrific energy involved, it’s hardly surprising that the tubes come out at random lengths. Technicians use sieves to get tubes of the desired length. The technique is inexact partly because no one was sure what caused the tubes to fracture.

Cutting a nanotube

Compression causes nanotubes to buckle and twist and eventually to lose atoms from their lattice-like structure.

Credit: Huck Beng Chew/Brown University


Materials scientists initially thought the super-hot temperatures caused the nanotubes to tear. A group of German researchers proposed that it was the sonic boomlets caused by collapsing bubbles that pulled the tubes apart, like a rope tugged so violently at each end that it eventually rips.

Kim, Brown postdoctoral researcher Huck Beng Chew, and engineers at the Korea Institute of Science and Technology decided to investigate further. They crafted complex molecular dynamics simulations using an array of supercomputers to tease out what caused the carbon nanotubes to break. They found that rather than being pulled apart, as the German researchers had thought, the tubes were being compressed mightily from both ends. This caused a buckling in a roughly five-nanometer section along the tubes called the compression-concentration zone. In that zone, the tube is twisted into alternating 90-degree-angle folds, so that it fairly resembles a helix.

That discovery still did not explain fully how the tubes are cut. Through more computerized simulations, the group learned the mighty force exerted by the bubbles’ sonic booms caused atoms to be shot off the tube’s lattice-like foundation like bullets from a machine gun.

“It’s almost as if an orange is being squeezed, and the liquid is shooting out sideways,” Kim said. “This kind of fracture by compressive atom ejection has never been observed before in any kind of materials.”

The team confirmed the computerized simulations through laboratory tests involving sonication and electron microscopy of single-walled carbon nanotubes.

The group also learned that cutting single-walled carbon nanotubes using sound waves in water creates multiple kinks, or bent areas, along the tubes’ length. The kinks are “highly attractive intramolecular junctions for building molecular-scale electronics,” the researchers wrote.

Huck Beng Chew, a postdoctoral researcher in Brown’s School of Engineering, is the first author on the paper. Myoung-Woon Moon and Kwang-Ryeol Lee, from the Korea Institute of Science and Technology, contributed to the research. The U.S. National Science Foundation and the Korea Institute of Science and Technology funded the work.

- Article by Richard Lewis, Brown Media Relations


This article has appeared in the following online publications:
http://www.nanowerk.com/news/newsid=19478.php
http://www.azonano.com/news.asp?newsID=21004
http://insciences.org/article.php?article_id=9738
http://www.futurity.org/top-stories/slice-nanotubes-with-sonic-booms/
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v468/n7326/full/468870d.html

Bashevkin and Deisley Win 2010-2011 Doris M. and Norman T. Halpin Prize for Interdisciplinary Senior Capstone Projects

Thanks to the generosity of Doris M. and Norman T. Halpin, the Brown University School of Engineering Executive Committee provides research awards for exceptional undergraduates. Projects are awarded based on how well they demonstrate the power of interdisciplinary thought in engineering science and design. This year's winners of the Halpin Prize are Eli Bashivkin '11 and Daniel Deisley '11.

Excerpts from Eli's Halpin award nomination:
Eli has been interested in spaceflight since he was young, and has long know he has wanted to enter the aerospace engineering industry. Eli chose to attend Brown despite the lack of an aerospace program to take advantage of the open curriculum to design for himself a course of study leading to a broader technical background, to address the issues of technology in society, and to supplement his classroom education with team work and independent study projects. Professor Rick Fleeter is supervising his work on an innovative desktop scale hybrid rocket motor safe enough for development and use by students in an academic lab environment.

Eli has spent his entire time at Brown as a member of Brown's Formula SAE Design Team, a large interdisciplinary effort that combines engineering, production, and business to design and build a racecar from scratch each year. Eli has worked extensively on all aspects of this process, manufacturing components, contacting and working with sponsors, managing small teams, designed the brake, drivetrain, and powertrain subsystems of the vehicle.

Eli has defined an independent study project for this year to develop a low thrust, paraffin-fueled, hybrid rocket motor. Hybrid rocket motors are exceptionally simpler, and in many cases safer, than traditional liquid rocket engines, and thus can be used to reduce costs and put missions requiring propulsion in the hands of students and academic experimentalists. Paraffin has recently been recognized as an exceptional fuel for these applications. Tests have been done on large (50,000 Newton thrust) paraffin hybrid rocket engines used for launch into space, but little work has been conducted on how small these motors can be made to work. Eli's designs are at the 1 Newton level and below, with rocket motor diameter of a centimeter or two.


Excerpts from Daniel's Halpin award nomination:

Daniel's thesis on carbon nanotube EMI shielding is one that addresses issues emerging from the intersection between the fields of electrical engineering, material science, physics of phase transitions, and polymer chemistry. In his research, he will team up with members of the Laboratory of Emerging Technology to explore a novel carbon nanotube - polymer composite and its multifunctions, with his focus placed on its effectiveness and optimization for EMI (electromagnetic interference) shielding. The thesis will experimentally assess the incorporation of carbon nanotube networks into phase-changing polymer for EM shielding, leading to an optimized EMI shielding material that is ultra-thin, lightweight, corrosion and scratch resistant, flexible, and scalable. If successful, his work has the potential to pave the way for applications of the EMI-shielding composite in passport, bank card, and personnel ID card protection, as well as RFID enabled supply-chain management systems.

Dr. Candace Lynch, Air Force Research Laboratory Engineer, Receives Harold Brown Award

Dr. Candace Lynch ScM'02, PhD'05, a senior scientist from Hanscom Air Force Base, Mass., received the 2010 Harold Brown Award on December 15 for her breakthrough research in pioneering new infrared technology that will augment aircraft defense and impact numerous Defense Department systems.

Dr. Lynch strengthened aircraft protection from heat-seeking missiles by developing counter-measure device technology involving laser material, specifically with the growth of orientation-patterned gallium arsenide.

The research physicist extended her technology to generate terahertz sources used in future imaging systems that enable the warfighter to see through brown-out conditions during helicopter landings or to image concealed weapons through clothing.

"Dr. Lynch's technology breakthrough is not only a national asset, but a testament to her dedication to science with a focus on national security," said Dr. David Jerome, the director of the sensors directorate in the Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio.

Dr. Lynch's efforts as part of the sensors directorate supported the science and technology necessary for superior U.S. air and space systems in intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, precision engagement and electronic warfare, Dr. Jerome said.

Having published more than 20 journal articles and eight conference presentations, Dr. Lynch received her bachelor of science from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass., and both her master's degree and doctorate of philosophy from Brown University in Providence, R.I.

The Harold Brown Award recognizes significant achievement in research and development that led to or demonstrated promise of a substantial improvement in operational effectiveness of the U.S. Air Force. The award's namesake was a physicist who served as Air Force secretary from 1965 to 1969 and as Defense secretary from 1977 to 1981. Dr. Lynch is the first female recipient of the award since the program began in 1969.

Story courtesy of Tech. Sgt. Amaani Lyle
Secretary of the Air Force Public Affairs

New Nanotechnology Patent: Material and Method for Promoting Tissue Growth U.S. Patent 7,833,283

Brown University Professors Thomas J. Webster and Karen M. Haberstroh were issued a patent (U.S. Patent No. 7,833,283) entitled “Material and Method for Promoting Tissue Growth” which describes a process to implement nanoscale surface features on polymers commonly used in regenerative medicine to increase the growth of numerous tissues. The patent describes how any polymer can be transformed to have surface features which mimic those of natural tissues to promote cell functions. It is currently being licensed to Nanovis, Inc. (www.nanovisinc.com).

In the lab, engineer’s novel liquid provides a solid fix for broken bones

A bone-healing fluid that can be injected into breaks with a syringe shows such strong promise in lab testing, that it has been licensed from Brown by a Massachusetts biotech startup for further development.

By David Orenstein

A nonmetalic solutionNanomaterials engineer Thomas Webster is
developing alternatives to metals,which do not
occur naturally in the body and can cause
problems with surrounding tissue.Credit: Webster Lab/Brown University

Here’s the vision: an elderly woman comes into the emergency room after a fall. She has broken her hip. The orthopaedic surgeon doesn’t come with metal plates or screws or shiny titanium ball joints. Instead, she pulls out a syringe filled with a new kind of liquid that will solidify in seconds and injects into the break. Over time, new bone tissue will take its place, encouraged by natural growth factors embedded in the synthetic molecules of the material.

Although still early in its development, the liquid is real. In the Brown engineering lab of professor Thomas Webster it’s called TBL, for the novel DNA-like “twin-base linker” molecules that give it seemingly ideal properties. The biotech company Audax Medical Inc., based in Littleton, Mass., has just announced an exclusive license of the technology from Brown. It brands the technology as Arxis and sees similar potential for repairing broken vertebrae.

“The reason we’re excited about this material is because it gets us away from metals,” Webster said. “Metals are not in us naturally and they can have a lot of problems with surrounding tissues.”

In some of his work, Webster employs nanotechnology to try to bridge metals to bone better than traditional bone cement. But TBL is an entirely new material, co-developed with longtime colleague and chemist Hicham Fenniri at the University of Alberta. Fenniri synthesized the molecules, while Webster’s research has focused on ensuring that TBL becomes viable material for medical use.

Buttressing bonesTwin-based linker molecules, top left, self-assemble
into six-molecule rings. Stacked in a tube shape, the
 rings of molecules not only provide a new scaffold
for bone growth, but can also store growth factors
and helpful drugs inside.
    Credit: Webster Lab/Brown University

The molecules are artificial, but made from elements that are no strangers to the body: carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen. At room temperature their aggregate form is a liquid, but the material they form solidifies at body temperature. The molecules look like nanoscale tubes (billionths of a meter wide), and when they come together, it is in a spiraling ladder-shaped arrangement reminiscent of DNA or collagen. That natural structure makes it easy to integrate with bone tissue.

In the space within the nanotubes, the team, which includes graduate student Linlin Sun, has managed to stuff in various drugs including antibiotics, anti-inflammatory agents, and bone growth factors, which the tubes release over the course of months. Even better, different recipes of TBL, or Arxis, can be chemically tuned to become as hard as bone or as soft as cartilage, and can solidify in seconds or minutes, as needed. Once it is injected, nothing else is needed.

“We really like the fact that it doesn’t need anything other than temperature to solidify,” Webster said. Other compounds that people have developed require exposure to ultraviolet light and cannot therefore be injected through a tiny syringe hole. They require larger openings to be created.


Liquid provides a solid fix for broken bones from Brown PAUR on Vimeo.


For all of TBL’s apparent benefits, they have only been demonstrated in cow bone fragments in incubators on the lab bench top, Webster said. TBL still needs to be proven in vivo and, ultimately, in human trials. Part of the agreement with Audax will include support to continue the material’s clinical development. Audax research and development director Whitney Sharp, a Brown alumna (Sc.B., 2008; Sc.M., 2009), is now working with Webster’s group.

“They see the future where hopefully we will get to the point where we won’t be implanting these huge pieces of metal into people,” Webster said. “Instead we’ll be implanting things through a needle that could be used to heal a hip that’s more natural.”

Rachel Decker Accepted into Entrepreneurial Fellows Program at Slater Technology Fund

Rachel Decker ScM '11, a current Program in Innovation Management and Entrepreneurship (PRIME) master's degree student, was just accepted into the Rhode Island National Science Foundation’s Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (NSF EPSCoR) Entrepreneurial Fellows Program at the Slater Technology Fund.

A collaboration initiated in 2008 between Slater and the Rhode Island NSF EPSCoR, the program is designed to encourage entrepreneurship in the life sciences and biotechnology industries in Rhode Island by formally engaging local university students in the venture development process.

The Entrepreneurial Fellows Program is designed to attract and support a next generation of entrepreneurs in the life sciences industry by drawing students from the state’s colleges and universities into active participation in the process of venture development. Fellows engage in venture development by working with both academic researchers and industry professionals to understand the process of start-up formation, the development of business plans, the recruitment of entrepreneurial teams, the raising of early-stage capital, and the implementation of commercialization strategies. A goal of the program is to better inform students of the career development options available within the life sciences industry and to help integrate them into the knowledge-based economy in Rhode Island

The Entrepreneurial Fellows Program was launched in 2008-2009 with a group of seven students from Brown University and the University of Rhode Island. The pilot-scale program was continued in 2009-2010 with another six students from Brown and the University of Rhode Island.


About Rhode Island NSF EPSCoR
The Rhode Island National Science Foundation Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (Rhode Island NSF EPSCoR) builds partnerships between state government, institutions of higher education, and industry to effect lasting improvements in Rhode Island’s research infrastructure and national R&D competitiveness. Rhode Island NSF EPSCoR began in 2004, receiving federal funding commitments in excess of $26.75 million. For more information, visit www.riepscor.org.


About Slater Technology Fund
The Slater Technology Fund is a state-backed venture capital fund that invests in new ventures committed to basing and building their businesses in Rhode Island. Slater focuses its resources on the support of entrepreneurs who have the vision, leadership, and commitment to build substantial commercial enterprises. Slater typically invests at the inception stage in the development of a new venture, often based upon ideas and technologies originating in academic institutions and/or government research laboratories located within the region. In most cases, investments are premised upon the possibility of raising substantial follow-on financing, from venture capital investors or from strategic partners, with a view toward accelerating the generation of significant numbers of high-value, high-wage jobs over the intermediate to longer-term. For more information, visit www.slaterfund.com.

Brown Students Perform Well at Elevator Pitch Contest

Professor Eric Suuberg reports that students from his ENGN 1930G Entrepreneurship course performed well in the Rhode Island Business Plan Competition’s Elevator Pitch Contest this week. The event took place at the new R.I. Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship and is considered a preview to the 2011 Rhode Island Business Plan Competition.

The winner, Theresa Raimondo '11, a chemical engineering concentrator, pitched an idea for a container that can quickly heat and cool beverages and won $300. The winning idea, called HnC (hot and cold), grew out of Suuberg's entrepreneurship class in which Raimondo and six other undergraduates have been working on a way to improve the taste of food eaten by astronauts, who don’t have access to refrigeration in space. Using compact thermoelectric technology, the beverage container they’re designing will heat or cool any drink between 50 and 150 degrees Fahrenheit within 90 seconds. The team is proposing to commercialize the product, which, it says, has the potential to redefine the beverage market. Raimondo made her 90-second pitch to a panel of judges and more than 200 audience members, and finished first in a field of 48 aspiring entrepreneurs.

In addition, students and alumni from the Program in Innovation Management and Entrepreneurship (PRIME) were presenting, and Joseph Ramos ScM'10 finished second. Ramos, of Axena Technologies in Providence, won $200 for his idea for a start-up company to combat health-care associated infections. Axena Technologies was founded by four graduates of Brown University's PRIME master's degree program. The biomedical engineering company utilizes a novel antibacterial technology to coat medical devices in order to mitigate healthcare-associated infections.

Dan Aziz '05, of PriWater in Providence, received $200 for his pitch for a drink to help pregnant women decrease the chance of certain birth defects.

Each of these teams is expected to do well in the actual business plan competition next semester.

RI Business Plan Competition Press Release:
http://www.ri-bizplan.com/News/Dec2010ElevatorPitchResults/tabid/231/Default.aspx

Providence Business New online edition that described the outcome of the competition: See http://www.pbn.com/Revolutionary-beverage-container-garners-top-prize-at-elevator-pitch-competition,54251

Lorin Jakubek and Nitin Jadhav Win 2010 Archambault Teaching Awards

The Office of Continuing Education has announced 2010 Archambault Teaching Awards, and two of the recipients are from the School of Engineering, Lorin Jakubek and Nitin Jadhav. Engineering was the only school or department with more than one honoree.

Stella Aslibekyan, a graduate student in Bio-Med, is the recipient of the 2010 Reginald D. Archambault Award for Teaching Excellence. Honorable mentions were awarded to Lorin Jakubek, School of Engineering; Daniel Block, Department of English; Erica Moretti, Italian Studies; and to Nitin Jadhav, School of Engineering.

The Reginald D. Archambault Award for Teaching Excellence recognizes, rewards, and promotes excellence in teaching in the Brown University summer programs. The award is named in recognition of Reginald D. Archambault, Professor of Education emeritus, and the inaugural Dean of Summer Studies, 1984 - 1992. Prof. Archambault served as Chair of Brown’s Education Department from 1967 through the early eighties, contributing greatly to the M.A.T. program and developing the Brown Summer High School as a teaching laboratory. He remains dedicated to advancing the craft of pedagogy.

Award recipients are selected based on their ability to influence, motivate and inspire students to learn, as well as their creativity and innovation in the development of curriculum and resources that promote student learning.

Award recipients will be recognized at an Office of Continuing Education Event in spring 2011.

Extreme Gingerbread Competition a Success

The Brown University Society for Women Engineers in collaboration with the University's Engineers Without Borders student organization held its fourth annual "Extreme Gingerbread House Competition" on Friday, December 3. Twenty-one teams of three to five students and professors participated, and the event raised more than $125 for Engineers without Borders. This year, Engineers Without Borders is focusing on helping a Haitian orphanage that was damaged during the earthquake in January, 2010. The designs ranged from the traditional to the modern, and included circular houses, and a replica of Frank Lloyld Wright’s Fallingwater.


This year, the teams were challenged to build earthquake resistant gingerbread houses out of graham crackers, icing, candy canes, pretzels, gummy bears and other supplied materials in a one-hour time period. Houses were required to be hollow with a maximum wall thickness of one inch, and had to exceed 6” x 6” x6”. The houses were judged both for aesthetics, and amount of time without breaking on a shake table.

Team eight, the bleeding gumdrops (Kelly Schryver ’11, Ben Howard ’11, Katie Delaney ’11, Adam Maynard ’11) won the competition with a score of 66.67 (16.67 appearance score and 50 structure score), while team 21 (Nick Ragosta ‘12, Ben Freudberg ‘12, Nattie Cooper ‘12, Aris Nakos ‘12) was close behind with a total score of 66.33 (16.33 for appearance plus 50 for structure). Team 16, known as team Barus & Holly (Kristie Chin ’11, Camile Rodriguez ’11, Katrina Wilson ’11, Kelsi Hirai ’11--with advising help from Professor Daniels), finished in third with a score of 65.67 (15.67 for appearance and 50 for structure). In all, seven of the 21 teams survived the maximum time of one minute.

Nanotechnology and nanomaterials: Promises for improved tissue regeneration is top article in NanoToday

A paper written by Dr. Lijie Zhang ScM'07 PhD'09, now an assistant professor at George Washington University, and Brown University associate professor Dr. Thomas Webster, is currently the most downloaded article from the journal NanoToday.

The article is entitled "Nanotechnology and nanomaterials: Promises for improved tissue regeneration" NanoToday 4(1):66-80, 2009 and covers recent advancements in the use of nanotechnology to improve tissue growth for numerous implant applications.

Summary
Tissue engineering and regenerative medicine aim to develop biological substitutes that restore, maintain, or improve damaged tissue and organ functionality. While tissue engineering and regenerative medicine have hinted at much promise in the last several decades, significant research is still required to provide exciting alternative materials to finally solve the numerous problems associated with traditional implants. Nanotechnology, or the use of nanomaterials (defined as those materials with constituent dimensions less than 100 nm), may have the answers since only these materials can mimic surface properties (including topography, energy, etc.) of natural tissues. For these reasons, over the last decade, nanomaterials have been highlighted as promising candidates for improving traditional tissue engineering materials. Importantly, these efforts have highlighted that nanomaterials exhibit superior cytocompatible, mechanical, electrical, optical, catalytic and magnetic properties compared to conventional (or micron structured) materials. These unique properties of nanomaterials have helped to improve various tissue growth over what is achievable today. In this review paper, the promise of nanomaterials for bone, cartilage, vascular, neural and bladder tissue engineering applications will be reviewed. Moreover, as an important future area of research, the potential risk and toxicity of nanomaterial synthesis and use related to human health are emphasized.

Link to NanoToday:
http://journals.elsevier.com/17480132/nano-today/

Link to full article:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B82X8-4TVY5PJ-2&_user=489286&_coverDate=02/28/2009&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=search&_origin=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_acct=C000022678&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=489286&md5=0590ae25

Grant gives new life to the virtual reality Cave

The Center for Computation and Visualization is home to the University’s Cave, a virtual reality cube. One minute it's showing the surface of Mars, and the next there is three-dimensional poetry wrapping its walls. It's called the Cave, but it's really just a cube — a virtual reality universe. And it's currently undergoing a $2 million renovation.

The National Science Foundation awarded the Center for Computation and Visualization, home to the University's Cave, a grant for renovations in Sept. 2009. The system — an eight-foot cube with images projected on walls in front, to the left and right of the user and on the floor — is now 11 years old.

Cave users wear LCD-shutter glasses that allow them to view data from a variety of angles. The Cave is equipped with tracking devices that move the projections to wherever the user is looking or touching.

The grant will allow the implementation of 70 new high-definition projectors, as well as wireless glasses and a bigger space to move around in, said John Huffman, graphics systems analyst for the CCV.

These renovations will give users "the ability to completely immerse yourself in ... scientific data," said David Laidlaw, professor of computer science.

"It's sort of like going from the very first telephone ... to the iPhone 4," Laidlaw said.

Many different departments use the Cave, including a "Cave Writing" class, which uses the system as a way of interacting with poetry, Huffman said. The Department of Geological Sciences uses the Cave to recreate the surface of Mars and other planetary objects, giving students the opportunity to use skills and techniques they have acquired in class, he added.

"It's a new way of seeing the planets that you can't really do any other way," said Caleb Fassett, postdoctoral research associate in the Department of Geological Sciences. According to Fassett, most of his students enjoy the experience of using the Cave as a visual component of their education.

When the upgrades are complete, the system will have better color representation, higher contrast and "the same resolution as your eyes are capable of," Huffman said.

Laidlaw said the CCV hopes to have the new Cave ready next October, when the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers will host a week-long forum in Providence.

(Article by Joseph Rosales/Brown Daily Herald)
(Photo by: Stephanie London/Brown Daily Herald)