The idea of engineering tissues that can replace whole body parts is pretty new. Someone I know who suffers from rheumatic-fever-induced mitral stenosis is pretty darn anxious for them to hurry up and perfect it before she’s put on the calendar for valve-replacement surgery. Current replacement options include only pig valves or mechanical ones. These new engineered ones are grown straight from the adult patient’s own cells. You still have to undergo the surgery, but the resulting replacement is a lot more likely to work without problems–IF it’s perfectly grown.

Now a scientist has perfected a much more powerful and effective way to examine these growing tissues for imperfections–the new technology gives a much better 3D image than MRI and costs a whole lot less ($1.5 million for an MRI machine, $15000 in material costs for the new approach).

This discovery also bodes happier days also for folks who need skin grafts and new blood vessels. Thank heavens for the dogged scientist who eats, sleeps and hangs out in the lab relentlessly pursuing his or her dream. We all win when the dreams come true.

“Doping” is the term invented by nanoscientists to refer to the process of sticking a foreign substance (impurity) onto a nanocrystal and letting the crystal grow around it. Who cares? Well, apparently you “dope” a nanocrystal so you can make it do more things. Scientists have discovered a way to get doping to work better with certain metals like manganese:

C&EN: Latest News – Doped Nanocrystals: “the advance could allow properties of nanocrystals to be engineered for numerous applications ranging from solar cells to future ‘spintronic’ memory devices, in which information is carried by electron spin in addition to electrical charge.”

Yes, says the Navy, we will be able to use these doped crystals to build improvements in certain “reconfigurable logic” elements.

I was stumped by the terms so checked around. I guess if you’re not an engineer, you might not know that “reconfigurable logic devices” includes things like room-temperature superconductors and quantum computers–and that “by designing and making stacks of different materials — some with layers only two to three atoms thick — researchers can create devices that have novel properties. The spintronic GMR head, for example, has boosted the disk-drive industry.”

In other words, doping a nanocrystal for spintronics means you and I will have faster instant-on computers, digital cameras, cell phones, etc. I, for one, am psyched about speeding up the digital camera–how many absolute classic photos have you missed because of the delay on yours?

Not surprisingly, physicians and scientists who work with terminal cancer patients and others nearing death have a hard time finding funding to conduct research. The obstacles to creating regular placebo studies are significant: you don’t have much time because the patients don’t live long enough; you can’t deny a dying person something that would help (to make the control group) because it wouldn’t be ethical; you can’t find many sources for funding because nobody wants to fund dying research–curing diseases is much more attractive.

Now comes the federal government offering long-term care insurance as an employee benefit. And guess what? It’s not very popular either. The article talks about how many decisions have to be made about where and how you’d be satisfied with long-term care, but the truth is, most people just don’t want to face the idea of their prolonged enfeeblement or that of someone they love.

Like buying a burial plot and/or funeral service ahead of time–it probably doesn’t spark the urge to pull out your wallet. With regular life insurance, we at least know for sure it’s going to happen some day, but in the long-term care arena, we battle with the superstition that just by buying it, we might be inviting it to happen.

But if the federal government leads the way on this, maybe more of us can be persuaded to think that far ahead, give up some spendable cash today and invest in this potential protection for ourselves and our families. It’ll depend in part on how happy the federal employees are with their new benefit.

This is depressing.

“There is little doubt haze is a major problem in many of the nation’s most treasured places – haze reduces natural visibility distances by as much as 25 miles in the eastern United States and 90 miles in some western parks.”

Guess I didn’t realize that pollution has spread so far. This new rule was jammed into place to meet some deadline and environmentalists say it’s pretty worthless. Gives polluters tons of leeway–which means we can count on the pollution to continue.

“The facilities covered by the rule each have the potential to emit more than 250 tons a year of visibility impairing pollution, including fine particulate matter (PM2.5), sulfur dioxides, nitrogen oxides and some volatile organic compounds.”

Oh, and let’s not even think about what this crud does to your lungs…

Better hurry out and visit your nearest national park before you can’t find it anymore in the smog.

I guess if you’re the surgeon general, you can make a case for it being news. But I gotta wonder if the reporters don’t get tired of writing about how some well-known so-and-so said one thing publicly and then suddenly appears to have changed his-or-her position on some important issue. Surgeon Frist changes his stance in the stem cell fight, writes Ceci Connelly in the Washington Post.

In the stem cell debate, nobody who has any designs on keeping a) a political position, b) a moral position “above the fray,” or c) a position that wants/needs government or other funding, can afford to come out in favor of using embryonic stem cells–no matter what they really think.

Sure makes for dull and repetitive reporting.

This is huge. How many little children–especially boys–are being dosed with drugs to take care of what’s been getting called a disease (ADHD)? There’s mounting evidence that a lot of hyperactive behaviors can be attributed to poor sleep.

In this study researchers followed a couple of hundred kids and families. The link between early snoring and later hyperactivity was powerful indeed–all snoring kids were twice as likely to have behavior issues, but boys were four times more likely to do so. \

Substance abuse counselors have known for years that some of the irrational inappropriate behaviors of addicts during non-drugged times can be attributed at least in part to the poor quality of sleep–alcohol and other drugs disturb brain patterns, alter the order and length of sleep cycles, and often interrupt sleep. Anxiety, depression and other emotional issues can all be brought on by poor sleep.

How many kids are we dosing with Ritalin et al. and how many adults with Prozac and other antidepressants when all they might need need is a good night’s sleep?

So now we can use silver (silver?) to preserve food. That and other amazing nano ideas are detailed in this Ziff Davis report on the latest in nanotechnology says

.“Finely milled silver, with particles mere microns in diameter, can attack the RNA of microbes, preventing them from reproducing…”

Apparently, tests with cut strawberries and a vegetable were very successful. The implications are promising–imagine being able to preserve fresh fruit and get it to places in the world that can’t grow it? Or keeping food fresh for soldiers? I’m sure whatever they come up with, it’ll beat the hell out of the old C-rations our fathers had to suffer through during World War II.

But the cautions are many. Ingesting silver along with your strawberries and cream could involve a host of unknown consequences. And the next concern that hit me was that preserving the substance of a food doesn’t necessarily mean you’re preserving the nutrients unaltered and/or undiminished.

Wow, the learning curve on nano stretches from here to far on the other side of the lives of most of us today. It’s almost as if we were back in the times when pasteurizing came along. We’re just babes in this new exciting and dangerous stretch of woods. But babes or not, we’ve got to bring along very adult attitudes as to how we’ll use the amazing powers we discover.

For over a century no one really know how or why nitroglycerin worked for patients experiencing angina attacks (pain associated with reduced blood flow to the heart). Now they’ve identified an enzyme that breaks it down (working in a compartment inside each cell) and releases a nitric-oxide related molecule–which helps relax blood vessels. Duke University researchers discovered that the enzyme (mALDH) works only in the mitochondria (that word really brings back school biology lessons)–the “powerhouse” of the cells–to help the process of manufacturing actual nitric oxide.

The research suggests that current ways of using nitroglycerin are not the most beneficial–and may even be harmful to some heart patients. The upshot is that scientists will now be able to better figure out how to use it more effectively.

Good news for the driving horde of baby boomers thundering up on their potential-heart-problem years.

Dark chocolate (who picked the substance to test for this experiment?) increases the elasticity of your small veins and arteries–which could help keep your blood pressure in line and reduce your risk of cardiovascular disease, says this Reuters report from the American Journal of Hypertension.

What’s that got to do with nitric oxide (NO–one of my favorite topics)? Apparently the abundance of flavonoids (recently getting more recognition as a valuable nutrient), among other things, helps that miraculous NO be more readily available for the body to use in all its many applications.

Speaking of flavonoids, I used to get depressed because I ADORE crisply cooked fresh green beans and I couldn’t figure out whether they were good for you because everywhere I read, it said they contained nary a vitamin worth discussing. Now I’ve discovered they’re full of flavonoids–thank God, now I can eat ’em and feel virtuous about my health at the same time.

And oh, listen to this: “Researchers found the active ingredient in Viagra, also known as sildenafil, helped children with pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) walk farther and breathe easier when taken over the course of a year.” PAH is usually fatal within a year of diagnosis–a worthy disease to look at alternative treatments for. Current approach includes administering inhaled NO (iNO) to relax lung tissue. Sildenafil works kind of like flavonoids–one effect is to increase the availability of NO. Here’s a good, easy-to-read discussion about flavonoids and other nutrients that do good things for us but don’t trigger deficiency symptoms because they’re not know to be essential.

Okay, it caught my eye because it used rabbits as the test subjects (I have a pet bunny named Angelina). But it’s a very exciting new technology that can apparently read and measure injuries or problems that are behind other tissues–as opposed to just seeing detecting masses like x-rays or MRI does.

Optical coherence tomography (OCT) was originally created for eye doctors–a “new, noninvasive, noncontact, transpupillary imaging technology” that uses a backscattered light technique (kind of like ultrasound) to let doctors differentiate and measure retinal thickness, according to the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary website. Applications for otolaryngolosits include earlier detection and possibly improved treatments for a whole host of eye problems and diseases, including diabetic retinopathy.

But the rabbit test, reported in the Otolaryngology, a journal on head and neck surgery, shows that OCT can also be used to tell the difference between scar tissue and swelling–which can occur during intubation for surgery. So this technique has promise for many other applications.