All posts; Tags Include "Biomedical Engineering"
- December 30, 2009
- 06:45 AM
- 129 views
2010, the year when 20/10 vision was promised
by Pablo Artal in Optics confidential
The promise of perfect "20/10" vision for everybody appeared to be a real possibility in the early 2000's. 2010 is already here and your doctor cannot offer you yet supervision...... Read more »
Santamaria, Artal, Bescos. (1987) Determination of the point spread function of human eyes using a hybrid optical-digital method. J.Opt.Soc.Am.A., 1109. info:/
- December 13, 2009
- 04:00 PM
- 163 views
Science and politics... and scientists turned politicians
by Pablo Artal in Optics confidential
Some examples and some advice on scientists becoming politicians...... Read more »
Binocular adaptive optics visual simulator. (2009) Binocular adaptive optics visual simulator. Optics Letters. info:/
- December 10, 2009
- 01:21 PM
- 176 views
Blood: Clot, Flow and Slip
by Arunn in Unruled Notebook
By 2020 seventy percent of the heart patients of the World, a study suggests, would be in India. The cause seems genetic. The gene that codes the enzyme called PON1 is defective in Indians and predisposes them to heart ailments and diabetes. Coupled with degenerating lifestyle – eating habits – leads to such a dire [...]... Read more »
Kaoui, B., Biros, G., & Misbah, C. (2009) Why Do Red Blood Cells Have Asymmetric Shapes Even in a Symmetric Flow?. Physical Review Letters, 103(18). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.103.188101
- November 16, 2009
- 08:42 AM
- 286 views
A Tale of a Microprocessor, RISC and a Few Loops of miRNA
by AmiyaSarkar in Physiology physics woven fine
The word ‘microprocessor’ is generally used to designate VLSI and SLSI (Very/Super Large Scale Integrated circuits) devices which accept, decode and execute instructions presented in binary coded forms. They may be called the heart of the computer. RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computer), on the other hand, is a type of microprocessor architecture that uses a simplified, yet highly-optimized set of instructions to deliver good performance. However, like ‘cell’ and ‘nucleus’, they too........ Read more »
Saumet, A., & Lecellier, C. (2006) Anti-viral RNA silencing: do we look like plants ?. Retrovirology, 3(1), 3. DOI: 10.1186/1742-4690-3-3
- October 31, 2009
- 01:24 PM
- 277 views
My research paper was rejected to be published. What can I do?
by Pablo Artal in Optics confidential
Prof. Artal. I am postdoctoral researcher working in Physics in an east-European country. I published several articles in high impact journals during my PhD thesis. However, the first article I submitted from my new research was rejected by the editor of the journal. I am quite disappointed since I believe the research was good (in fact the best I ever did) and moreover, the reasons for the rejection were not convincing. I feel very depressed and even thinking quiting my research career. If any........ Read more »
A. Guirao, M. Redondo, P. Artal. (2000) Optical aberrations of the human cornea as a function of age. J. Opt. Soc. Am. A,, 1697. info:/
- October 18, 2009
- 11:22 AM
- 210 views
Metallica Goes The Stem Cell Way
by AmiyaSarkar in Physiology physics woven fine
I had previously written a little about stem cells. While researchers still don’t yet know exactly how the four factors transform the fully differentiated fibroblast cells back into pluripotency, possible explanations are pouring in.Pluripotency (by which the stem cell may become any tissue; muscle or nerve, for example) and “self renewal” (cells should not only differentiate, some ready stock of stem cells must be there for future need) are important determinants for stem cells.According ........ Read more »
Okita, K., Ichisaka, T., & Yamanaka, S. (2007) Generation of germline-competent induced pluripotent stem cells. Nature, 448(7151), 313-317. DOI: 10.1038/nature05934
- October 10, 2009
- 10:24 PM
- 319 views
BioEngineered personalized human bone grafts created from bone marrow stem cells
by Abhishek Tiwari in Fisheye Perspective
Scale up of engineered bone grafts towards clinical applications is always a central challenge in regenerative medicine. In latest article PNAS Grayson et. al report an approach to develop clinically sized viable bone grafts of human temporomandibular joint (TMJ) condylar or Jaw bone seeded with human bone marrow stem/progenitor cells (hMSCs). This study was carried out by a research group led by Dr Gordana Vunjak-Novakovic at the Columbia University and it appears in the online issue of journ........ Read more »
Grayson, W., Frohlich, M., Yeager, K., Bhumiratana, S., Chan, M., Cannizzaro, C., Wan, L., Liu, X., Guo, X., & Vunjak-Novakovic, G. (2009) Regenerative Medicine Special Feature: Engineering anatomically shaped human bone grafts. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0905439106
- October 7, 2009
- 01:27 PM
- 315 views
Pennes Bioheat Transfer Equation
by Arunn in Unruled Notebook
It can be argued that one of the most influential articles ever published in the Journal of Applied Physiology is the Analysis of tissue and arterial blood temperatures in the resting human forearm by Harry H. Pennes, which appeared in Volume 1, No. 2, published in August, 1948. Thus begins Prof. Wissler, his 1998 revisit [...]... Read more »
PENNES HH. (1948) Analysis of tissue and arterial blood temperatures in the resting human forearm. Journal of applied physiology, 1(2), 93-122. PMID: 18887578
- September 29, 2009
- 06:02 AM
- 272 views
How we see? How they see? Simulation of vision in myopia, catract, supervision...
by Pablo Artal in Optics confidential
Short lecture of Pablo Artal, professor of Optics at the University of Murcia in Spain on how different persons see the world. Based in the use of a unique research tool: the adaptive optics visual simulator. Learn how a myopic person sees, or a person with cataract or how a lucky individual with "supervision" can read letters at great distance!... Read more »
E. J. Fernández, S. Manzanera, P. Piers, P. Artal. (2002) Adaptive optics visual simulator. J. Refract. Surg. info:/
- September 18, 2009
- 02:49 PM
- 271 views
Returning the Rainbow
by Kristopher Hite in Tom Paine's Ghost
Red-Green color blindness is caused by a deficiency in opsin genes. These genes codes for photoreceptor proteins of the same name positioned in the cone cells of the eye's retina to receive photons (light). When light hits these photoreceptor proteins a tiny molecule buried inside changes its shape by swinging its bond angles and begins a signal transduction cascade. The signal of "red" or "green" is passed from this tiny "g-coupled" protein receptor along the optic nerve and eventually to the b........ Read more »
Mancuso, K., Hauswirth, W., Li, Q., Connor, T., Kuchenbecker, J., Mauck, M., Neitz, J., & Neitz, M. (2009) Gene therapy for red–green colour blindness in adult primates. Nature. DOI: 10.1038/nature08401
- August 30, 2009
- 06:11 PM
- 362 views
Binocular adaptive optics visual simulator: the future of visual testing
by Pablo Artal in Optics confidential
A recently developed adaptive optics instrument for the two eyes is described. The way on how eventually this system may change the traditional and old fashioned way of testing vision and prescribing spectacles is discussed...... Read more »
Fernández, E., Prieto, P., & Artal, P. (2009) Binocular adaptive optics visual simulator. Optics Letters, 34(17), 2628. DOI: 10.1364/OL.34.002628
- August 16, 2009
- 03:12 AM
- 253 views
Of Twinkling Nanostars and the Possible Application of Stroboscopes in Biological Imaging
by AmiyaSarkar in Physiology physics woven fine
Imagine a strong crowd, as you see in a Manchester United versus Liverpool football match and you wished to concentrate on a particular person. How would you do it? Make him wear a fluorescent shirt and dye his hair (don’t do it in the middle of the crowd, I can’t guarantee your safety).Purdue University researchers have been successful in focusing at the cell of interest among a background of equally noisy and boisterous biomolecules and other metabolically active cells. Currently, research........ Read more »
Wei, Q., Song, H., Leonov, A., Hale, J., Oh, D., Ong, Q., Ritchie, K., & Wei, A. (2009) Gyromagnetic Imaging: Dynamic Optical Contrast Using Gold Nanostars with Magnetic Cores. Journal of the American Chemical Society, 131(28), 9728-9734. DOI: 10.1021/ja901562j
- August 4, 2009
- 05:00 PM
- 393 views
Can myopia progression be controlled?
by Pablo Artal in Optics confidential
Myopia is a refractive condition that eventually could be controlled by spectacles designed to change the optics in the periphery of the retina. Some of the new results on this exciting topic are described...... Read more »
Linda Lundström,Alejandro Mira-Agudelo,, & Pablo Artal. (2009) Peripheral optical errors and their change with accommodation differ between emmetropic and myopic eyes. Journal of Vision, 9(6), 1-11. info:/
- July 20, 2009
- 09:49 AM
- 456 views
When scientific progress means going backwards: reverse engineering of biochemical networks
by Douglas Kell in Douglas Kell's blog
The recipe for much of modelling in systems and network biology is comparatively easy. First one establishes the topology or ‘structure’ of the network (the curly arrow version seen in wallcharts – such as those for metabolism, now available electronically – of ‘who talks to whom?’). Then one finds out the equations – such as [...]... Read more »
Herrgård, M., Swainston, N., Dobson, P., Dunn, W., Arga, K., Arvas, M., Büthgen, N., Borger, S., Costenoble, R., Heinemann, M.... (2008) A consensus yeast metabolic network reconstruction obtained from a community approach to systems biology. Nature Biotechnology, 26(10), 1155-1160. DOI: 10.1038/nbt1492
- July 8, 2009
- 10:15 AM
- 420 views
Monstrous effort to map a transcriptional network
by Gustav Nilsonne in Evolving Ideas
The FANTOM consortium report in the latest issue of Nature Genetics that they have measured what happens with the entire, total, gene expression during the specific differentiation of a cell line called THP-1. Not the expression of just the 20 000 most important genes, all of them. At the same time.... Read more »
Suzuki, H., Forrest, A., van Nimwegen, E., Daub, C., Balwierz, P., Irvine, K., Lassmann, T., Ravasi, T., Hasegawa, Y., de Hoon, M.... (2009) The transcriptional network that controls growth arrest and differentiation in a human myeloid leukemia cell line. Nature Genetics, 41(5), 553-562. DOI: 10.1038/ng.375
- June 29, 2009
- 04:51 AM
- 388 views
Of directed evolution and downturns
by Douglas Kell in Douglas Kell's blog
In the previous blog, I wrote about directed evolution for the discovery of variants of proteins with desirable properties (and that this is a multiobjective combinatorial optimisation problem). The usual metaphor for understanding the relationship between sequence and structure is that of a ‘landscape’, in which one moves about through sequence space seeking a high [...]... Read more »
Tokuriki, N., & Tawfik, D. (2009) Chaperonin overexpression promotes genetic variation and enzyme evolution. Nature, 459(7247), 668-673. DOI: 10.1038/nature08009
- June 28, 2009
- 04:27 PM
- 529 views
Silky Muscles
by Toaster Sunshine in Mad Scientist, Junior
You're running through the cool woods on a hot day, barefoot as dead leaves rustle underfoot and the cold flint tickles beneath. The green leaves and kudzu blur past as you dodge beaming shafts of sunlight and the hot ground they illuminate. You scan the earth ahead for sinkholes and patches of poison ivy, but still, the chilled, humid air coiled around the trees flowing in your ears feels joyous in comparison to the sauna of the open field. You dart between two trees, then suddenly stop and ........ Read more »
Agnarsson, I., Dhinojwala, A., Sahni, V., & Blackledge, T. (2009) Spider silk as a novel high performance biomimetic muscle driven by humidity. Journal of Experimental Biology, 212(13), 1990-1994. DOI: 10.1242/jeb.028282
- June 2, 2009
- 04:58 PM
- 610 views
Plagiarism... what can be done? simply suffer it?
by Pablo Artal in Optics confidential
Some comments on the impact of plagiarism on science. How affect scientists; what can we do as scientists and more... (ah! and some recommendations on restaurants too).... Read more »
P.Artal, S. Marcos, R. Navarro, D. R. Williams. (1995) Odd aberrations and double-pass measurements of retinal image quality. J. Opt. Soc. Am. A, 195.
- June 1, 2009
- 04:00 PM
- 546 views
An Infrared revolution
by ScienceBlogs Brazil in Brazillion Thoughts
Some weeks ago, Science published a paper that may start a revolution in Medical and Biological Sciences and, possibly, the way some diseases are diagnosed. Before giving any detail about this paper, I will take a small detour.
In 2004, I had the opportunity to watch Roger Tsien talk in an imaging course. Following the informal environment of the course, Tsien showed some of his last creations in the world of fluorescent markers. It was when I concluded that someday he would get a Nobel Prize, ........ Read more »
Shu, X., Royant, A., Lin, M., Aguilera, T., Lev-Ram, V., Steinbach, P., & Tsien, R. (2009) Mammalian Expression of Infrared Fluorescent Proteins Engineered from a Bacterial Phytochrome. Science, 324(5928), 804-807. DOI: 10.1126/science.1168683
- May 11, 2009
- 03:45 AM
- 405 views
Autophagy vs. cholesterol
by ouroboros in Ouroboros: Research in the biology of aging
Over at Fight Aging!, Reason has penned a very nice piece of analysis on a recent article demonstrating that stimulation of one autophagic pathway can reduce plasma lipoproteins and triglycerides. From the blog post:
A Tangible Benefit of Artificially Boosting Autophagy
The researchers used a compound to block lipolysis in order to provoke greater levels of autophagy [...]... Read more »
Straniero, S., Cavallini, G., Donati, A., Pallottini, V., Martini, C., Trentalance, A., & Bergamini, E. (2009) Stimulation of Autophagy by Antilipolytic Drugs May Rescue Rodents from Age-Associated Hypercholesterolemia. Rejuvenation Research, 12(2), 77-84. DOI: 10.1089/rej.2008.0806
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