A dressing for the heart?
In the quest to develop realistic materials to replace and repair the parts of the human body, scientists are faced with a formidable challenge: real tissues are often both strong and extensible and variable in shape and size.
A team from Cu Boulder led by Jason Burdick in chemical and biological engineering, in collaboration with researchers from the University of Pennsylvania, has taken a critical stage towards the cracking of this code. They have developed a new route to a 3D printing material which is both elastic enough to withstand the persistent beats of a heart, tough enough to support the crushing load placed on the joints and easily facilitable to adapt to the unique defects of a patient. Better yet, it easily sticks to the wet fabric.
Their breakthrough, described in the Revue Science, helps to open the way to a new generation of biomaterials, from internal bandages which provide drugs directly to the heart to cartilage plates and sutures without needle.
“Game changer” for osteoarthritis patients
Imagine one day when the joints can heal. During the first idea of a grumpy knee, patients could obtain a single blow in the joint which would prevent their cartilage and their bone from eroding, but would launch its regrowth.
This may seem a dream for 32.5 million people with osteoarthritis. But the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health granted up to $ 39 million to a team of scientists led by Boulder from the University of Colorado to work to make it a reality.
The program of new innovations for the regeneration of fabrics in osteoarthritis (nitro) was the first created within the framework of ARPA-H, a new federal agency to support “from strong impact solutions to the most difficult health problems of society”.
“In five years, our objective is to develop a series of non -invasive therapies that can end osteoarthritis,” said project manager Stephanie Bryant, professor in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, on the Science and Materials Engineering Program, and Biofrontors Instructed of CU Boulder. “It could be an absolute change of play for patients.”
Solving post-quantum problems
Huck Bennett works to protect our data from pirates when the quantum computer revolution arrives.
Bennett, deputy professor of computer science, was funded by the National Science Foundation to investigate the feasibility of network -based cryptography to protect itself against the threat of quantum computers.
The safety of cryptography stems from difficult mathematical problems that take computers to solve – or at least we hope they will. But because quantum computers can quickly solve some of these problems, researchers explore new classes of problems that are suitable for both cryptography and secure against quantum computers.
Bennett’s work is to test the pressure one of the new methods of post-health cryptography suggested, network-based cryptography. The problems constructed from these multidimensional geometric objects can be quick to solve if you have the right information, but without it, they take a lot of time and calculation power.
Defying the laws of thermal physics
A team of engineers and scientists from the materials of the Paul M. mechanical engineering department has developed a new technology to transform thermal radiation into electricity in a manner that literally teases the fundamental law of thermal physics.
The breakthrough was discovered by the CUI research group, led by the deputy professor Longji CUI. Their work, in collaboration with researchers from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, was published in the journal Energy & Environmental Sciences.
The group says their research has the potential to revolutionize manufacturing industries by increasing electricity production without the need for high temperature heat sources or expensive materials. They can store clean energy, lower carbon emissions and harvest the heat of geothermal, nuclear and solar radiation factories around the world.
By designing a unique and compact thermotovoltaic device which can hold in a human hand, the team was able to overcome the vacuum limit defined by the law of Planck and the double of the power density given previously reached by the conventional TPV conceptions.
Study space with smartphones
In a new study, researchers from Google and Cu Bulder have transformed millions of Android phones around the world into a fleet of agile scientific instruments – generating one of the most detailed cards to date on the upper layer of the earth’s atmosphere.
The group’s results, published in the journal Nature, can help improve the precision of GPS technology in the world several times. The research was led by Brian Williams of Google Research and included Jade Morton, professor in the Department of Aerospace Engineering Ann and HJ Smead in Cu Boulder.
Morton and his colleagues used GPS sensors that come from standard in each smartphone to collect data on how the earth atmosphere distorts signals from satellites. In the process, they were able to see phenomena in the atmosphere, such as spots above the planet known as “plasma bubbles”, in details never seen.
A mathematical model of COVVI-19
The change in behavior of people until a vaccine can be developed prevented around 800,000 COVI-19 deaths in the United States, much more than many scientists provided, according to Cu Boulder and UCLA.
But interventions such as locking and school closings have been very expensive – the one that could be reduced in future pandemics if the country had a better infrastructure to collect public health data.
For the study, Stephen Kissler of Cu Boulder, assistant teacher of computer science and mathematical epidemiologist, joined an economy teacher at the UCLA to answer a fundamental but unanswered question: how many deaths by COVID-19 have been prevented by behavioral interventions such as masking and social distancing, combined with vaccines?
Kissler and his colleague gathered national serology data from blood samples to estimate the number of people infected or vaccinated at various times from February 2020 to February 2024 and mortality data for Centers for Disease Control. Then, they used computer models to mathematically recreate the pandemic as happened, in account in the role of behavior changes.
By tinkering with the models of the model to simulate different scenarios, they were able to ask questions like: how many people would have died if no one had done things like masks or practice social distancing? And how many people would have died if the vaccines never come?
DIY Machine runs dissolved textiles
Researchers from the Atlas Institute have developed a DIY machine that turns textile fibers in materials such as gelatin of sustainable origin. The group’s “biofibers” feel a bit like linen fibers and dissolve in hot water in a few minutes at an hour.
“When you no longer want these textiles, you can dissolve them and recycle gelatin to make more fibers,” said Michael Rivera, co-author of the new research teacher and assistant atlas Institute and the IT department.
The study addresses a growing problem worldwide: in 2018 only, people in the United States added more than 11 million tonnes of textiles to discharges, according to the Environmental Protection Agency-, in addition 8% of all municipal solid waste produced that year.
The team machine is small enough to hold on an desk and costs only $ 560 to build. Eldy Lázaro Vásquez, a doctoral student who directs the research, hopes that the device will help designers from around the world to make their own biofibers.
Better gas sensors with “quantum compression”
For the first time, scientists used a technique called “quantum compression” to improve gas detection performance of devices called optical frequency comb lasers. These ultra-preccosed sensors are like fingerprint scanners for gas molecules. Scientists have used them to identify methane leaks in the air above oil and gas operations and signs of COVVI-19 infections in hormaing samples.
From now on, in a series of laboratory experiences, researchers have followed a path to make this type of measure even more sensitive and faster – flexible the speed of frequency comb detectors. Work is a collaboration between Scott Diddams in Cu Boulder and Jérôme Genest from Laval University in Canada.
“Say that you were in a situation where you needed to detect tiny quantities of a dangerous gas leak in the middle of the factory,” said Diddams, professor in the Department of Electric, IT and Energy Engineering. “Need only 10 minutes for 20 minutes can make a big difference to ensure people safety.”
Sharing of atmospheric scientific technology, expertise
Drone technology and atmospheric scientific instruments developed by Cu Boulder will soon be available for researchers on a national level through a subsidy of the National Science Foundation to establish a program of community instruments and installations.
Brian Argrow, professor in the Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences of the ANN and HJ, and its colleagues have spent decades developing drone systems in Wings Fixed and Quad-Copter to study the weather and other atmospheric conditions.
The new grant will provide access to the larger scientific community for the instrumentation and know-how of Cu Boulder.
“We bring aerospace to the community of atmospheric sciences,” said Argrow. “We have expertise, drones, deployment systems and regulatory approval to fly in the national airspace system.”