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brainpanhandler » Wed Jan 29, 2014 5:46 pm wrote:In other news:

01/29/2014 | 8:43 AM
Scientists discover a new, simpler way to make stem cells
By Carolyn Y. Johnson / Globe Staff


A team of Boston and Japanese researchers stunned the scientific world Wednesday by revealing a remarkably simple and unexpected way to create stem cells able to give rise to any tissue in the body.

To transform mature cells into powerful stem cells that are a biological blank slate, the team simply bathed them in an acid bath for half an hour. The technique appears to be far easier and faster than current methods for creating these cells, which scientists are racing to develop into therapies for a range of diseases.

The result is “shocking,” “astounding,” “revolutionary,” and “weird,” said scientists not accustomed to using such exuberant words to describe new research findings. The finding has been officially reported only in mice, but human studies are underway. Researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital said that over the weekend they made what appears to be a human version of the stem cells, although further study and confirmation of that preliminary result is needed.

“It’s just a wonderful result; it’s almost like alchemy,” said Douglas Melton, co-director of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, who was not involved in the research published Wednesday in the journal Nature. “It says one has found a way to reveal the hidden potential of cells with a relatively straightforward method.”

...

The approach is so simple and so out-of-the-box that it might never have been tried if it hadn’t been for the persistence and curiosity of Dr. Charles Vacanti, a Brigham and Women’s anesthesiologist working largely outside the field of stem cell science.

Vacanti is best known for his work on the “earmouse,” the flashy tissue engineering feat of growing a human ear on the back of a mouse that made headlines in 1995. Vacanti wanted to find a better cell type to use on tissue engineering projects and began working with a team including his younger brother Martin, a pathologist, to find one.

In a 2001 study, they reported the discovery of a new kind of stem cell that they isolated with a technique that had been used to isolate neural stem cells: they mashed up mature tissue and passed it through ever-smaller pipettes to sift out a new type of cell they called a “spore-like cell.”

“Our lab was pretty ridiculed,” Vacanti recalled, of the scientific response. After that, “I kind of kept it to myself.”

...

Vacanti believes that it’s possible what the researchers uncovered is part of the body’s natural healing mechanism—that the more stringent the stress on the cell, the further they get kicked back to a pluripotent state.

...

Dr. George Q. Daley, director of the stem cell transplantation program at Boston Children’s Hospital, said that it had been a long time since he read a scientific paper and felt both so amazed and perplexed. The technique must be repeated in many labs, he said, and probed to see whether it could be useful, but it’s a provocative reminder of the malleability of cells—a concept that has undergone a revolution in biology over the past decade.

“It’s a startling result that makes you stand up and go, ‘Wow!’” Daley said. “With an equal dose of amazement and skepticism.”



http://www.boston.com/news/science/blog ... /blog.html

Physicists create synthetic magnetic monopole predicted more than 80 years ago

Nearly 85 years after pioneering theoretical physicist Paul Dirac predicted the possibility of their existence, an international collaboration led by Amherst College Physics Professor David S. Hall '91 and Aalto University (Finland) Academy Research Fellow Mikko Möttönen has created, identified and photographed synthetic magnetic monopoles in Hall's laboratory on the Amherst campus. The groundbreaking accomplishment paves the way for the detection of the particles in nature, which would be a revolutionary development comparable to the discovery of the electron.

A paper about this work co-authored by Hall, Möttönen, Amherst postdoctoral research associate Michael Ray, Saugat Kandel '12 and Finnish graduate student Emmi Ruokokski was published today in the journal Nature.

"The creation of a synthetic magnetic monopole should provide us with unprecedented insight into aspects of the natural magnetic monopole—if indeed it exists," said Hall, explaining the implications of his work.

Ray, the paper's lead author and first to sight the monopoles in the laboratory, agreed, noting: "This is an incredible discovery. To be able to confirm the work of one of the most famous physicists is probably a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I am proud and honored to have been part of this great collaborative effort."

Ordinarily, magnetic poles come in pairs: they have both a north pole and a south pole. As the name suggests, however, a magnetic monopole is a magnetic particle possessing only a single, isolated pole—a north pole without a south pole, or vice versa. In 1931, Dirac published a paper that explored the nature of these monopoles in the context of quantum mechanics. Despite extensive experimental searches since then, in everything from lunar samples—moon rock—to ancient fossilized minerals, no observation of a naturally-occurring magnetic monopole has yet been confirmed.

Hall's team adopted an innovative approach to investigating Dirac's theory, creating and identifying synthetic magnetic monopoles in an artificial magnetic field generated by a Bose-Einstein condensate, an extremely cold atomic gas tens of billionths of a degree warmer than absolute zero. The team relied upon theoretical work published by Möttönen and his student Ville Pietilä that suggested a particular sequence of changing external magnetic fields could lead to the creation of the synthetic monopole. Their experiments subsequently took place in the atomic refrigerator built by Hall and his students in his basement laboratory in the Merrill Science Center.

After resolving many technical challenges, the team was rewarded with photographs that confirmed the monopoles' presence at the ends of tiny quantum whirlpools within the ultracold gas. The result proves experimentally that Dirac's envisioned structures do exist in nature, explained Hall, even if the naturally occurring magnetic monopoles remain at large.

Finally seeing the synthetic monopole, said Hall, was one of the most exciting moments in his career. "It's not every day that you get to poke and prod the analog of an elusive fundamental particle under highly controlled conditions in the lab." He added that creation of synthetic electric and magnetic fields is a new and rapidly expanding branch of physics that may lead to the development and understanding of entirely new materials, such as higher-temperature superconductors for the lossless transmission of electricity. He also said that the team's discovery of the synthetic monopole provides a stronger foundation for current searches for magnetic monopoles that have even involved the famous Large Hadron Collider at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research. (Older theoretical models that described the post-Big Bang period predicted that they should be quite common, but a special model for the expansion of the universe that was later developed explained the extreme rarity of these particles.)

Added Aalto's Möttönen: "Our achievement opens up amazing avenues for quantum research. In the future, we want to get even a more complete correspondence with the natural magnetic monopole."

Hall, who was recently named a Fellow of the American Physical Society, said his team's experimental work arose out of interest from Amherst summer student researchers at a group meeting in 2011, well after Pietilä and Möttönen's 2009 paper had appeared in Physical Review Letters. "It felt as though Pietilä and Möttönen had written their letter with our apparatus in mind," he said, "so it was natural to write them with our questions. Were it not for the initial curiosity on the part of the students we would never have embarked on this project."

...it’s almost like alchemy...

Vacanti believes that it’s possible what the researchers uncovered is part of the body’s natural healing mechanism—that the more stringent the stress on the cell, the further they get kicked back to a pluripotent state.

Harvesting light, the single-molecule way

New insights into one of the molecular mechanisms behind light harvesting, the process that enables photosynthetic organisms to thrive, even as weather conditions change from full sunlight to deep cloud cover, will be presented at the 58th Annual Biophysical Society Meeting, taking place in San Francisco from Feb. 15-19.

At the meeting, Hsiang-Yu Yang, a graduate student, and Gabriela Schlau-Cohen, a postdoc in W.E. Moerner's research group at Stanford University, will describe how probing these natural systems at the single molecule level is helping to understand the basic mechanisms of light harvesting—work that could help improve the design and efficiency of devices like solar cells in the future.

"Through our approach, we are able to have a better understanding of the natural designs of light harvesting systems, especially how the same molecular machinery can perform efficient light harvesting at low light while safely dissipating excess excitation energy at high light," explained Yang.

The Moerner group has been studying various photosynthetic antenna proteins using the single-molecule Anti-Brownian ELectrokinetic (ABEL) trap and has uncovered new states of the light harvesting complexes with different degrees of quenching. "By analyzing the transition between these states in a bacterial antenna protein," explained Schlau-Cohen, "we found a process that may be one of the molecular mechanisms of photoprotection, or the way in which the organism protects itself from damage by excess light."

The next steps are to use this technique to understand the natural designs of light harvesting systems, and investigate whether the same processes appear in higher plants. Thus, they are extending their studies to look at photosynthetic proteins from green plants. Eventually, understanding these general principles may help in developing or improving the building of artificial light-harvesting devices.

More information: The presentation, "Elucidation of the Photodynamics of Single Photosynthetic LH2 Complexes in Solution" by Gabriela S. Schlau-Cohen, Quan Wang, June Southall, Richard J. Cogdell and W. E. Moerner will be at 11:15 a.m. on Sunday, February 16, 2014 in Room 303 at San Francisco's Moscone Convention Center. Abstract: tinyurl.com/nbgca5v

The related presentation, "Single-molecule Exploration of the Photodynamics of LHCII Complexes in Solution" by Gabriela S. Schlau-Cohen, Hsiang-Yu Yang, Michal Gwizdala, Tjaart Krüger, Pengqi Xu, Roberta Croce, Rienk van Grondelle and W. E. Moerner will be at 1:45 p.m. on Sunday, February 16, 2014 in Hall D in San Francisco's Moscone Convention Center. Abstract: tinyurl.com/p8g32wm

Japan Plans to Have a Power Plant in Space in a Decade


Written by
MEGHAN NEAL
@meghanneal
meghan.neal@vice.com
May 14, 2014 // 05:00 AM EST


Japan, where the disastrous Fukushima meltdown heightened the search for safe, sustainable alternative energy, is answering that need by sending a power plant into space.

Actually, the plan to power the globe with gigantic space-based solar panels has been kicking around since the '60s. But thanks to a perfect storm of technological advances—strong but lightweight tether materials, swarming worker robots that can self-assemble, more efficient solar panels, and cheaper payload launches—this thing is actually looking feasible.

JAXA, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, recently announced that it intends to stick a solar-generated power station in orbit for the first time by 2025—just over a decade.

Picture this: Floating 24,000 miles above the Earth's surface is a mammoth power plant (power satellite may be more accurate) that stretches several miles long, weighs 10,000 metric tons, and is covered with solar panels basking in the sun and storing up its powerful energy.


Image: Screenshot from JAXA/YouTube

The solar station is tethered to a base station on the ground with six-mile-long wires. This acts as a counterforce to offset the gravitational pull so the satellite is essentially pulled in tow as the Earth turns, keeping it at a fixed point in geostationary orbit. It’s the concept astrophysicists proposed to build our future space elevators, as explained Professor Emeritus at JAXA Susumi Sasaki in an editorial in IEEE.

The problem is that part of the Earth's rotation spins it away from the sun, which doesn't do much good for a solar power station. So the scientists hacked the initial model by adding in a couple mirrors to reflect the sunlight and point it directly on the panels, 24/7. These mirrors are just floating free, and scientists on the ground have to configure the whole setup with extreme precision.


Floating mirrors would reflect the sunlight onto the solar panels. Image: JAXA

That’s just the beginning of this multibillion-dollar challenge, however. After launching the station and mirrors up into the sky, the station then has to beam back energy to a small target on Earth, relying on wireless power transmission—something humans have been studying for decades but have yet to perfect.

According to the plan, the solar energy collected by the giant power satellite will be converted to microwaves, which are capable of traveling long distances while avoiding obstacles like weather and debris. The microwaves are beamed down to a receiving site on the ground speckled with antennas, where it's converted to electricity.



The planned space-based station can process 1 gigawatt of power, on par with the nuclear plants here on the planet. But it can do this ostensibly indefinitely, as long as the machinery (and the sun) hold out.

Solar panels in space are up to 10 times more efficient than the ones we've got on Earth, so the potential is beyond intriguing. If JAXA's or other current plans to build space-based solar power stations work—and according to the JAXA site, "we are getting close to the stage where it is feasible"— that could be a revolutionary change for society. A lot of industries would be turned on their heads.

In a blog post on the World Future Society, futurist Thomas Frey speculated that once one orbital solar station proves to be successful, other nations with space programs would rush to launch power plants into space, too. He believes the JAXA project marks the beginning of the next space race.

Maybe it could be: Energy is one of the most pressing issues of our generation, and probably the generation after that even more so. At the dawn of the space exploration age and peak techno-optimism, the temptation to look for an answer in the skies makes sense.

Woman’s cancer killed by measles virus in unprecedented trial
BY LINDSEY BEVER
May 15 at 1:24 am

Her name is Stacy Erholtz. For years, the 50-year-old mom from Pequot Lakes, Minn., battled myeloma, a blood cancer that affects bone marrow. She had few options left.
She had been through chemotherapy treatments and two stem cell transplants. But it wasn’t enough. Soon, scans showed she had tumors growing all over her body.
One grew on her forehead, destroying a bone in her skull and pushing on her brain. Her children named it Evan, her doctor said. Cancer had infiltrated her bone marrow.
A nurse uses a syringe to prepare an injection of the combined Measles Mumps and Rubella (MMR) vaccination at an MMR drop-in clinic at Neath Port Talbot Hospital near Swansea in south Wales on April 20, 2013. Public health officials said on April 19 they were investigating the first suspected death from measles in Britain in five years, after an outbreak blamed on a campaign against vaccinations. More than 800 people have contracted the highly contagious disease in Wales in the past six months, centred around the southern city of Swansea. Marion Lyons, director of health protection for Wales, said it had now been confirmed that a 25-year-old man from Swansea who died on April 18 had measles, a full postmortem will be conducted to determine cause of death. AFP PHOTO / GEOFF CADDICK (Photo credit should read GEOFF CADDICK/AFP/Getty Images)
A nurse uses a syringe to prepare an injection of the combined Measles Mumps and Rubella (MMR) vaccination at an MMR drop-in clinic in 2013. (GEOFF CADDICK/AFP/Getty Images)

So, as part of a two-patient clinical trial, doctors at the Mayo Clinic injected Erholtz with 100 billion units of the measles virus – enough to inoculate 10 million people.
Her doctor said they were entering the unknown.
Five minutes into the hour-long process, Erholtz got a terrible headache. Two hours later, she started shaking and vomiting. Her temperature hit 105 degrees, Stephen Russell, the lead researcher on the case, told The Washington Post early Thursday morning.
“Thirty-six hours after the virus infusion was finished, she told me, ‘Evan has started shrinking,’” Russell said. Over the next several weeks, the tumor on her forehead disappeared completely and, over time, the other tumors in her body did, too.
Russell said he and his team had engineered the virus to make it more suitable for cancer therapy. And, after just one dose of it, Erholtz’s cancer went into remission. She has been completely cleared of the disease, Russell wrote in Mayo Clinic Proceedings. Though, in this trial, the treatments were successful on only one of the two patients.
And Tanios Bekaii-Saab, a researcher at James Cancer Hospital and Solove Research Institute in Ohio, said the study must be confirmed in large randomized clinical trials — where many hopes get dashed, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported.
“Unless we get to the third stage of development, we are cautiously optimistic,” he said.
According the clinic’s statement released Wednesday:
In a proof of principle clinical trial, Mayo Clinic researchers have demonstrated that virotherapy — destroying cancer with a virus that infects and kills cancer cells but spares normal tissues — can be effective against the deadly cancer multiple myeloma. …
Oncolytic virotherapy — using re-engineered viruses to fight cancer — has a history dating back to the 1950s. Thousands of cancer patients have been treated with oncolytic viruses from many different virus families (herpes viruses, pox viruses, common cold viruses, etc.). However, this study provides the first well-documented case of a patient with disseminated cancer having a complete remission at all disease sites after virus administration.
“What this all tells us is something we never knew before – we never knew you could do this in people,” Russell said. “It’s a very important landmark because now we know it can happen. It’s a game changer. And I think it will drive a development in the field.”
The Star Tribune explained how it works:
[Viruses] bind to tumors and use them as hosts to replicate their own genetic material; the cancer cells eventually explode and release the virus. Antiviral vaccines that have been rendered safe can produce the same effects and can also be modified to carry radioactive molecules to help destroy cancer cells without causing widespread damage to healthy cells around the tumors. The body’s immune system then attacks any remaining cancer that carries remnants of the vaccine’s genetic imprint.
Russell said the trial taught the medical researchers two things: “No. 1, you need a really big dose and No. 2, the patient needs to not have an antibody to the virus.”
Russell said the treatment worked in Erholtz, whose tumors were mostly in her bone marrow. However, it was unsuccessful in the other patient, whose tumors were mainly in her leg muscles, the Star-Tribune reported. He said more research is needed to know how the nature of the tumor affects the virus.
For now, once the vaccine has been administered, the body’s immune system will recognize it the second time and attack it. Russell said an upcoming clinical trial will look at breaking down the immune system before treatment.
Also, many people have had the vaccine, though, Russell said patients with myeloma often have weakened immune systems, which can allow the virus to work anyway.
Eventually, this type of technique could become a standardized treatment for cancers such as myeloma or pancreatic cancer, Saab said.
The next step for this method is another clinical trial, which is expected to launch by September, to see if the massive measles dose works on a large number of patients.
Other such trials are going on across the country, such as the NeuVax clinical trial for patients at risk for breast cancer recurrence. Another one, which is run by the Providence Cancer Center, will use bacteria instead of viruses to treat glioblastoma, a type of common brain cancer, according to Medical Daily.
As for Erholtz, her next step is an annual checkup next month, but she’s optimistic.
“We don’t let the cancer cloud hang over our house, let’s put it that way, or we would have lived in the dark the last 10 years,” Erholtz told the Star Tribune

Smog-Sucking Electrostatic Vacuum Cleaners May Scrub Polluted Air
Residents of Beijing may enjoy pockets of fresh air, thanks to giant devices that remove particulates out of the city’s filthy sky
May 13, 2014 |By Edmund Newton
electrostatic air cleaner


An electrostatic air cleaner for Beijing might look like this rendering.
Credit: Courtesy of ENS
The murky brown smoke that hangs over Beijing and other industrial cities has long presented a health challenge to China. Unwilling to shut the factories and coal-burning plants that cause pollution, authorities instead are seeking novel solutions. Proposals have included seeding clouds to make rain to wash particulates out of the sky and equipping bicycles with pedal-powered generators that pump fresh air into riders’ helmets. The latest idea comes from Dutch artist Daan Roosegaarde, who hopes to create bubbles of clean air in various pockets around the Beijing.

Roosegaarde’s positive–ionization “vacuum cleaner” uses high-voltage, low-amp electricity to create an electrostatic field. Particles flowing across the field—enclosed in a box—become positively charged and attach themselves to a grounded electrode, which need to be scraped clean periodically. (Roosegaarde plans to turn the stuff into “diamond” rings, with a cubic-centimeter stone representing a cubic kilometer of smog.)

The system was actually invented by Delft University of Technology researcher Bob Ursem, who came up with the idea of ionizing smog particles after watching tiny bits of salt, dust and organic matter flow off the Atlantic Ocean onto a Dutch beach. “They floated into the dunes toward some bushes,” Ursem says, “and there was a lift effect, carrying them above the bushes.” The particles, negatively charged from friction, were avoiding contact with negatively charged foliage. “They floated above the bushes, indicating that the electrical force is greater than the gravity force,” Ursem says.

He replicated the phenomenon using dust in his lab, and he devised a way of reversing the charge on the particles using the electrostatic field. Under lab conditions, he says, his invention doesn't even require a ventilation system to draw air across the coils of electrified copper wire. The force of positively charged particles attaching themselves to a ground makes room for other particles to follow, soon creating an “ionic wind,” Ursem says.

But in reality, the Beijing air cleaner would require fans, say officials the research and development firm Environmental Nano Solutions (ENS) Europe, which bought the concept from Delft University and is developing it for commercial marketing. And it would not—as portrayed in Roosegaarde’s animated depiction of the device in action—produce an actual patch of blue sky above.

Roosegaarde, who uses technology to make big artistic statements about the environment, came up with the idea of using it to tackle the smog problem in Beijing, and he pitched it to then-Mayor Guo Jinlong last year. After a March trade meeting with Xi Jinping, China’s president, and two subsequent meetings with Beijing authorities—who have budgeted $2.4 billion to address the smog problem in various ways—Roosegaarde and ENS have agreed to install one of their smog-busting machines in a municipal park there sometime in the next year.

The outward appearance of the device is flexible, says Martin Pau, ENS’s business manager. Plans for the Beijing device center on a large octagonal structure eight meters tall with intake vents at the top and exhaust vents in the middle, out of which will flow smog-free air. The steel structure will weigh about nine metric tons. To demonstrate the absence of smog in the freshair zone, lasers will shoot out beams, which will be invisible in a particle-free environment. ENS Europe’s smog buster will clean a dome-shaped area 30 meters in diameter to a height of about five meters. The whole thing, Pau says, will “resemble a medieval Chinese palace.”

Demonstrations using prototype smog-collectors in a parking garage, a large pig barn and a highway tunnel have proved the machines’ ability to clear out up to 99 percent of particles as big as 15 micrometers and as small as 10 nanometers, Pau says. This range includes the particles—from 2.5 to 10 micrometers—that the World Health Organization deems as having the greatest potential for causing human health problems.

The ENS technology may sound similar to home ionizing devices, such as Sharper Image’s Ionic Breeze, which are marketed as air-cleansing machines. The Ionic Breeze has been roundly criticized by Consumer Reports and others not only for its ineffectiveness but also for its tendency to emit ozone, which harms the lungs. But that is a totally different situation, Roosegaarde and his technical advisers say. The trick is to create only positively charged ions—not negative ions, which latch onto oxygen molecules to form ozone.

ENS wants to persuade Chinese officials eventually to install their air-cleansing devices on the sides of Beijing buildings, thereby creating pockets of smog-free air around the city. The device may not be the permanent solution to Beijing’s smog problem, Roosegaarde notes. “But it’s an interesting way of using technology—not just in a purely scientific way but also creating an experience to engage people.”

seemslikeadream » Fri May 16, 2014 12:06 pm wrote:

Japan Plans to Have a Power Plant in Space in a Decade


Written by
MEGHAN NEAL
@meghanneal
meghan.neal@vice.com
May 14, 2014 // 05:00 AM EST


Japan, where the disastrous Fukushima meltdown heightened the search for safe, sustainable alternative energy, is answering that need by sending a power plant into space.

Actually, the plan to power the globe with gigantic space-based solar panels has been kicking around since the '60s. But thanks to a perfect storm of technological advances—strong but lightweight tether materials, swarming worker robots that can self-assemble, more efficient solar panels, and cheaper payload launches—this thing is actually looking feasible.

JAXA, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, recently announced that it intends to stick a solar-generated power station in orbit for the first time by 2025—just over a decade.

Picture this: Floating 24,000 miles above the Earth's surface is a mammoth power plant (power satellite may be more accurate) that stretches several miles long, weighs 10,000 metric tons, and is covered with solar panels basking in the sun and storing up its powerful energy.


Image: Screenshot from JAXA/YouTube

The solar station is tethered to a base station on the ground with six-mile-long wires. This acts as a counterforce to offset the gravitational pull so the satellite is essentially pulled in tow as the Earth turns, keeping it at a fixed point in geostationary orbit. It’s the concept astrophysicists proposed to build our future space elevators, as explained Professor Emeritus at JAXA Susumi Sasaki in an editorial in IEEE.

The problem is that part of the Earth's rotation spins it away from the sun, which doesn't do much good for a solar power station. So the scientists hacked the initial model by adding in a couple mirrors to reflect the sunlight and point it directly on the panels, 24/7. These mirrors are just floating free, and scientists on the ground have to configure the whole setup with extreme precision.


Floating mirrors would reflect the sunlight onto the solar panels. Image: JAXA

That’s just the beginning of this multibillion-dollar challenge, however. After launching the station and mirrors up into the sky, the station then has to beam back energy to a small target on Earth, relying on wireless power transmission—something humans have been studying for decades but have yet to perfect.

According to the plan, the solar energy collected by the giant power satellite will be converted to microwaves, which are capable of traveling long distances while avoiding obstacles like weather and debris. The microwaves are beamed down to a receiving site on the ground speckled with antennas, where it's converted to electricity.



The planned space-based station can process 1 gigawatt of power, on par with the nuclear plants here on the planet. But it can do this ostensibly indefinitely, as long as the machinery (and the sun) hold out.

Solar panels in space are up to 10 times more efficient than the ones we've got on Earth, so the potential is beyond intriguing. If JAXA's or other current plans to build space-based solar power stations work—and according to the JAXA site, "we are getting close to the stage where it is feasible"— that could be a revolutionary change for society. A lot of industries would be turned on their heads.

In a blog post on the World Future Society, futurist Thomas Frey speculated that once one orbital solar station proves to be successful, other nations with space programs would rush to launch power plants into space, too. He believes the JAXA project marks the beginning of the next space race.

Maybe it could be: Energy is one of the most pressing issues of our generation, and probably the generation after that even more so. At the dawn of the space exploration age and peak techno-optimism, the temptation to look for an answer in the skies makes sense.

PRESS RELEASE
May 15, 2014, 2:05 p.m. ET

IBM Research Discovers New Class of Industrial Polymers

New experimental polymers could deliver cheaper, lighter, stronger and recyclable materials ideal for electronics, aerospace, airline and automotive industries

Researchers used a novel 'computational chemistry' hybrid approach to accelerate the materials discovery process that couples lab experimentation with the use of high-performance computing


SAN JOSE, Calif., May 15, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Scientists from IBM Research (NYSE: IBM) have successfully discovered a new class of polymer materials that can potentially transform manufacturing and fabrication in the fields of transportation, aerospace, and microelectronics. Through the unique approach of combining high performance computing with synthetic polymer chemistry, these new materials are the first to demonstrate resistance to cracking, strength higher than bone, the ability to reform to their original shape (self-heal), all while being completely recyclable back to their starting material. Also, these materials can be transformed into new polymer structures to further bolster their strength by 50% - making them ultra strong and lightweight. This research was published today in the peer-reviewed journal, Science, with collaborators including UC Berkeley, Eindhoven University of Technology and King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology (KACST), Saudi Arabia.

Polymers, a long chain of molecules that are connected through chemical bonds, are an indispensable part of everyday life. They are a core material in common items ranging from clothing and drink bottles (polyesters), paints (polyacrylics), plastic milk bottles (polyethylene), secure food packaging (polyolefins, polystyrene) to major parts of cars and planes (epoxies, polyamides and polyimides). They are also essential components in virtually every emerging advanced technology dating back to the industrial revolution -- the steam engine, the space ship, the computer, the mobile phone.

However, today's polymer materials are limited in some ways. In transportation and aerospace, structural components or composites are exposed to many environmental factors (de-icing of planes, exposure to fuels, cleaning products, etc.) and exhibit poor environmental stress crack resistance (i.e., catastrophic failure upon exposure to a solvent). Also, these polymers are difficult to recycle because they cannot be remolded or reworked once cured or thermally decomposed by heating to high temperatures. As a result, these end up in the landfill together with toxins such as plasticizers, fillers, and color additives which are not biodegradable.

IBM's discovery of a new family of materials with a range of tunable and desirable properties provides a new opportunity for exploratory research and applications development to academia, materials manufacturers and end users of high performance materials. Two new related classes of materials have been discovered which possess a very distinctive range of properties that include high stiffness, solvent resistance, the ability to heal themselves once a crack is introduced and to be used as a resin for filled composite materials to further bolster their strength.

Also, the ability to selectively recycle a structural component would have significant impact in the semiconductor industry, advanced manufacturing or advanced composites for transportation, as one would be able to rework high-value but defective manufactured parts or chips instead of throwing them away. This could bolster fabrication yields, save money and significantly decrease microelectronic waste.

"Although there has been significant work in high-performance materials, today's engineered polymers still lack several fundamental attributes. New materials innovation is critical to addressing major global challenges, developing new products and emerging disruptive technologies, " said James Hedrick, Advanced Organic Materials Scientist, IBM Research. "We're now able to predict how molecules will respond to chemical reactions and build new polymer structures with significant guidance from computation that facilitates accelerated materials discovery. This is unique to IBM and allows us to address the complex needs of advanced materials for applications in transportation, microelectronic or advanced manufacturing."

Materials Science Innovation

The field of material science is often thought of as a mature field, with the most recent new class of polymer materials being discovered and introduced to the commercial market decades ago. Also, most current polymer research involves studying polymers that are "old" polymers and combining known polymers together or simply adjusting chemical functional groups on known polymers to access desired properties, as opposed to making completely new polymers.

IBM scientists used a novel 'computational chemistry' hybrid approach to accelerate the materials discovery process that couples lab experimentation with the use of high-performance computing to model new polymer forming reactions. The unconventional method is a departure from traditional techniques and led to the identification of several previously undiscovered classes of polymers in what was believed to be an established area of materials science researched extensively since the 1950s.

Ideally, scientists could insert a list of requirements into a computer to design a material that meets those exact conditions. Unfortunately, the reality now is that materials are still primarily discovered only by experimenting in the lab based on the scientist's knowledge, experience and educated guesses. IBM Research's computational chemistry efforts can take out a lot of this guesswork and accelerate a whole new range of potential applications from developing a disease-specific drugs or cheap, light, tough and completely recyclable panels on a car.

"By joining forces with IBM Research and bringing together the minds of KACST and IBM scientists, we have managed to merge the strengths of both sides, making it possible to bring forth novel green materials that exhibit excellent properties while being completely recyclable. We believe that this work can have significant impact to multiple industries and hope to see more great things come from our collaboration, " said his highness prince Turki bin Saud, KACST VP of Research Institutes.

How it Works

These polymers, formed from the same inexpensive starting material through a condensation reaction, these molecules join together and lose small molecules as by-products such as water or alcohol and were created in an operationally simple procedure and are incredibly tunable.

At high temperatures (250 degrees Celsius) the polymer becomes incredibly strong due to a rearrangement of covalent bonds and loss of the solvent that is trapped in the polymer (now stronger than bone and fiberboard), but as a consequence is more brittle (similar to how glass shatters).

Remarkably, this polymer remain intact when it is exposed to basic water (high pH), but selectively decomposes when exposed to very acidic water (very low pH). This means that under the right conditions, this polymer can be reverted back to its starting materials, which enables it for reuse for other polymers. The material can also be manufactured to have even higher strength if carbon nanotubes or other reinforcing fillers are mixed into the polymer and are heated to high temperatures. This process enables polymers to have properties similar to metals, which is why these "composite blends" are used for manufacturing in airplane and cars. An advantage to using polymers in this case over metals is that they are more lightweight, which in the transportation industry translates to savings in fuel costs.

At low temperatures (just over room temperature), another type of polymer can be formed into elastic gels that are still stronger than most polymers, but still maintains its flexibility because of solvent that is trapped within the network, stretching like a rubber band.

Probably the most unexpected and remarkable characteristic of these gels is that if they are severed and the pieces are placed back in proximity so they physically touch, the chemical bonds are reformed between the pieces making it a single unit again within seconds. This type of polymer is called a "self healing" polymer because of its ability to do this and is made possible here due to hydrogen-bonding interactions in the hemiaminal polymer network. One could envision using these types of materials as adhesives or mixing in with other polymers to induce self-healing properties in the polymer mixture. Furthermore, these polymers are reversible constructs which means that can be recycled in neutral water, and that they might find use in applications that require reversible assemblies, such as drug cargo delivery.

Researcher invents continuous, zero-toxic-emission system that converts nonrecycled plastics into crude oil
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But now MIT spinout PK Clean, founded by Priyanka Bakaya MBA '11, aims to end the landfilling of plastic with a cost-effective system that breaks down nonrecycled plastics into oil, while reusing some of the gas it produces to operate.

"Plastic comes from oil to begin with, so it makes sense, instead of landfilling plastic, to convert it back to usable fuel," Bakaya says. "The goal is to end landfilled plastic waste forever—not just domestically, but also globally."

PK Clean's so-called "continuous" system—the first of its kind in the United States, according to Bakaya—runs on a process called catalytic depolymerization, where heat and a catalyst break down plastics into crude oil to sell to refineries.

About 70 to 80 percent of the product comes out as oil. Roughly 10 to 20 percent becomes hydrocarbon gas that heats the system, while the remainder is char residue.

Following a trial in Pune, India, PK Clean last year built and installed its first full-scale commercial plant in Salt Lake City, partnering with Rocky Mountain Recycling, Utah's largest recycler.

Operating continuously, the plant can convert up to 10 tons of plastic per day into 60 barrels of oil, with zero toxic emissions. Produced at around $35 per barrel, the oil is sold to a nearby refinery for around $100 per barrel.

After nearly a year of operations in Utah, PK Clean plans to partner with other recyclers across the nation. Eventually, Bakaya says the plan is to move to developing countries, "where plastic waste is even more of an issue."
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How It Works: Slingshot Water Purifier

The system needs only enough energy to start the first boil, and a little more to power the compressor and pump. That’s supplied by an outlet or a solar panel; all the subsequent boiling and cooling self-perpetuates.

One: The user places a hose in any dirty water source—say, a polluted river or well—and a small pump draws the fluid into a boiling chamber. As the water reaches roughly 100°C, it turns to steam, which leaves behind any pollutants. They flow out of the chamber via a separate hose.

Two: The steam rises into a compressor, which squeezes it and thereby raises its pressure and its temperature by about 10°C more. The high-pressure vapor now has a higher boiling point, which means it can condense back into water at a temperature greater than 100°C.

Three: A counterflow heat exchanger runs the superheated water past the incoming flow of dirty water. The process heats the incoming water and cools the hot water to room temperature. That distilled water is ready to drink, while the dirty water vaporizes and begins the process all over again.