"Solid Liquid Gas"

“Its like 5th grade science mixed with sculpture. Its about being curious and playful. There is still a lot to wonder about.”
–Caleb Charland, photographer, physics enthusiast

From My Modern Metropolis:

Caleb Charland demonstrates lessons in physics and mathematics with his mind-blowing photography. Inspired by children’s books of science experiments, he photographs everyday objects (like matches, pens and mirrors) in ways we’ve never imagined, often using multiple exposures to tell the story.

…The beauty of it all is that there’s an honesty to Charland’s work. By transforming everyday household objects into unexpected experiences, he makes us appreciate multiple disciplines; art, science and photography. In addition, his work evokes that sense of curiosity that often lays dormant in us as adults. While looking at his photos, you can’t help but marvel at the scientific laws that govern us and, at the same time, feel as though Charland’s somehow cheated them.

(Hat tip: Ed)

But some insurance companies have resisted paying for the newer tests, called chromosomal microarrays, because they are more expensive than older techniques. This delay in technological uptake could be keeping many children from receiving crucial early treatment for their conditions. Now, an expert group is calling on large medical associations to adopt microarrays as the preferred genetic tests for children with unexplained autism, developmental delays or other birth defects.

Traditional karyotyping techniques are still the best choice for conditions such as Down’s syndrome that are caused by gross chromosomal abnormalities and are easily recognized by clinicians. But most developmental disorders show a range of symptoms and can arise from more subtle genetic glitches, such as microscopic DNA deletions or duplications. That’s where the much more sensitive microarrays come in.

…read the rest of my latest in Nature Medicine

Topol has launched a company, the West Wireless Health Institute, that is working on real stethoscopes and related technologies — using iPhones and other wireless devices. Here’s what he told the San Diego Union Tribune:

This technology is already here, introduced in February 2010, by GE (a device called “Vscan”). I use this for all the patients I see, at no cost except for initially purchasing the pocket echo device, and have been able to markedly reduce the number of full echoes that are needed (which cost more than $1,500, take 40 to 45 minutes, and require another appointment to be set up to get the test). Each year in the United States, over 8 million heart echoes are done at a cost of well over $10 billion. If we can cut that at least 10 (percent) to 20 percent, it has enormous potential.

As far as taking one’s vital signs, this is right around the corner. Sensors on the wrist can be used to get blood pressure, heart rate, oxygen concentration in the blood, breathing rate, temperature, and this will ultimately be displayed on the cell phone. Very exciting for people who need this, and potentially worrisome for inducing “e-hypochondriacs” for those who don’t.

The sensors will undoubtedly play an enormous role in the years ahead, since they can measure virtually anything that makes us tick, anytime, anywhere, continuously — it is just a matter of using these appropriately, validating the improvements, and making sure they can reduce the costs of health care.

But the biggest findings in this field may well come from tinier brains.

In a review published 30 March in Molecular Psychiatry, a group of Australian researchersargues thatflies, bees, worms and fish have much to offer psychiatric research.

Even the most primitive nervous systems share some important features with ours. Synapses in the worm Caenorhabditis elegans, for instance, relay chemical messages using the same neurotransmitters we do. The layout of various brain regions in humans and zebrafish is also remarkably similar.

Obviously, these organisms don’t display behavioral hallmarks of psychiatric diseases — imagine measuring the social anxiety of an autistic worm, or hallucinations in a schizophrenic fish. Still, they do show some explicit behaviors that could be informative.

For example, honeybees are dependent on the social structure of their hive; when they are deprived of those interactions, their brain does not wire properly and their memory declines.

These models offer two major advantages over rodents. First, their biology is simpler. C. elegans has just 302 neurons — compared with 4 million in a mouse or 100 billion in a human — and scientists have already worked out the position, shape and connectivity of each one.

Second, they allow for faster, more efficient experimental manipulations. For example, the fruit fly carries roughly 75 percent of all known human disease genes, but because of its 10-day generation time, its genome is infinitely easier to tinker with. Likewise, because zebrafish embryos are transparent, scientists can quickly see structural effects of specific genetic changes.

Some autism researchers have already taken advantage of these model systems. In February, researchers reported that honeybee brains surge with the autism-linked neurexin and neuroligin proteins during learning. Other groups have shown that FMRP, the protein missing in fragile X, controls sleep behaviors in fruit flies.

The reviewers urge scientists to do more “species hopping” — synthesizing findings from many organisms of varying complexity.

A 'DNA spider'

A very cool bit of technology came out this week: scientists created ultra-tiny molecular machines that use DNA as a scaffold. Theoretically, these machines could move or manipulate molecules in a cell, or even produce drugs that target specific tissues.

From The Scientist:

They have constructed DNA-based robots that can walk along a specific path unaided or collect various nanoparticles along an assembly line, according to two studies published this week in Nature.

“This has the feel to me of the beginning of a technology revolution,” said Andrew Ellington, an evolutionary engineer at the University of Texas at Austin and the vice president of the International Society for Nanoscale Science, Computation and Engineering, who was not involved in the research. “This work will absolutely pave the way for how you build molecular robots.”

The robots built in one study are a type of DNA walker, called a molecular “spider.” They are minute, mobile molecules that move along a flat surface made out of folded DNA, known as DNA origami, binding to and unbinding from the surface as they go.

…Read more about the usefulness of these tiny ‘bots

Co-culture of human epidermal keratinocytes and melanocytes stained for melanocyte PMel17 (red), keratinocyte cytokeratin (green) and DNA (blue).

(Hat tip: the one and only bioephemera)

Last summer, I wrote about scientists trying to figure out how to use data gleaned from implanted electrodes in order to predict the onset of epileptic seizures.

Unfortunately, long-term use of those metal electrodes has major drawbacks: irritation, inflammation and scarring. Now comes a new kind of bio-compatible electrode, made of silk! From Technology Review:

This week in the journal Nature Materials, the team reports using a silk electrode device to measure electrical activity from the surface of the brain in cats. Silk is mechanically strong–that means the films can be rolled up and inserted through a small hole in the skull–yet can dissolve into harmless biomolecules over time. When it’s placed on brain tissue and wetted with saline, a silk film will shrink-wrap around the surface of the brain, bringing electrodes with it into the wrinkles of the tissue. Conventional surface electrode arrays can’t reach these crevices, which make up a large amount of the brain’s surface area.

“A device like this would completely open up new avenues in all of neuroscience and clinical applications,” says Gerwin Schalk, a researcher at the Wadsworth Center in Albany, NY, who is not affiliated with the silk electrode group. “What I foresee is placing a silk-based device all around the brain and getting a continuous image of brain function for weeks, months, or years, at high spatial and temporal resolution.”

Imagine, then, the painstaking task of mapping out this complicated wiring diagram. That’s the lofty goal of the Human Connectome Project, a $30 million scheme sponsored by the National Institutes of Health. The agency is reviewing proposals and expects to start funding them by July.

Ever since the famous lesion studies of the 19th century, we’ve learned a lot about the 100 or so distinct regions of the brain, from the spot above the ear that allows us to speak to the area in the back of the head that activates when our eyes see light. But scientists say the real challenge is to understand how these regions connect.

Older connectome projects — such as the one that charted the 302 neurons of the C. elegans worm — relied on making super-thin slices of brain tissue. But this tedious approach just doesn’t cut it for researchers trying to map the brain of a living person in three dimensions.

The Connectome Project aims to study the brain’s major information highways — the large bundles of nerves that link regions — in healthy people. The researchers plan to combine data from several imaging technologies. If two regions light up at the same time during functional magnetic resonance imaging, for instance, that may imply that they are connected. A method that tracks the fiber bundles, called diffusion tensor imaging, could then double-check the links.

If all goes well, the researchers will have the first roadmap of the human brain as early as 2015.

Journalism, in contrast, is not at all mechanical. Every story requires different background reading, different sources. Every interview is structured a bit differently, and changes depending on what the interviewee says. New things happen every day, which may change the facts of the story. Journalism is fundamentally about things that only a human mind can deal with: facts, ideas, analysis. At least I like to think so.

That’s why I was stunned to read about a robot journalist:

Researchers at the Intelligent Systems Informatics Lab (ISI) at Tokyo University have developed a journalist robot that can autonomously explore its environment and report what it finds. The robot detects changes in its surroundings, decides if they are relevant, and then takes pictures with its on board camera. It can query nearby people for information, and it uses internet searches to further round out its understanding. If something appears newsworthy, the robot will even write a short article and publish it to the web.

This story got a lot of play on my Twitter feed yesterday, especially from cynical/frightened/dismissive journos. But I see this bot as filling the same role that the surgery-bot does: a tool to help a skilled human.

Let’s say I was writing a profile about some fabulous biologist. I visit her lab for a personal interview and to meet her team. While I’m busy with all that good stuff, my bot could be roaming around the various lab rooms, taking high-res pictures, video, making measurements, asking lab techs a series of simple questions (that I’ve crafted ahead of time) and recording their answers. When I get home, in addition to my own scribbles and tape recordings from the interviews, I’ll have all of this great extra stuff from my bot. It’d be an enormously useful resource!

Now, where can I order one?