Kanzius - Enhanced systems and methods for RF-induced hyperthermia

United States Patent	7,510,555
Kanzius	March 31, 2009

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Enhanced systems and methods for RF-induced hyperthermia

Abstract

A method of inducing hyperthermia in at least a portion of a target area--e.g., a tumor or a portion of a tumor or targeted cancerous cells--is provided. Targeted RF absorption enhancers, e.g., antibodies bound to RF absorbing particles, are introduced into a patient. These targeted RF absorption enhancers will target certain cells in the target areas and enhance the effect of a hyperthermia generating RF signal directed toward the target area. The targeted RF absorption enhancers may, in a manner of speaking, add one or more RF absorption frequencies to cells in the target area, which will permit a hyperthermia generating RF signal at that frequency or frequencies to heat the targeted cells.

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Inventors:	Kanzius; John (Erie, PA)
Assignee:	Therm Med, LLC (Erie, PA)
Appl. No.:	11/050,422
Filed:	February 3, 2005

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Related U.S. Patent Documents

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	Application Number	Filing Date	Patent Number	Issue Date
	10969477	Oct., 2004
	60569348	May., 2004

What is claimed is:

1. A method for killing or damaging target cells in a patient, comprising: introducing into the patient RF absorption enhancers capable of selectively binding to the target cells and further capable of generating sufficient heat to kill or damage the bound target cells by heat generated solely by the application of an RF field generated by an RF signal between a transmission head and a reception head that is different from the transmission head; arranging the transmission and reception heads on opposite sides of a portion of the patient for treatment; and irradiating the portion of the patient between the transmission and reception heads containing RF absorption enhancers with an RF field to kill or damage the target cells from the heat generated by the RF absorption enhancers.

Source

Quantitative 3D Video Microscopy of HIV Transfer Across T Cell Virological Synapses

Science 27 March 2009:
Vol. 323. no. 5922, pp. 1743 - 1747
DOI: 10.1126/science.1167525

Reports

Wolfgang Hübner,¹ Gregory P. McNerney,³ Ping Chen,¹ Benjamin M. Dale,¹ Ronald E. Gordon,² Frank Y. S. Chuang,³ Xiao-Dong Li,⁴ David M. Asmuth,⁴ Thomas Huser,^3,4 Benjamin K. Chen^1*

The spread of HIV between immune cells is greatly enhanced by cell-cell adhesions called virological synapses, although the underlying mechanisms have been unclear. With use of an infectious, fluorescent clone of HIV, we tracked the movement of Gag in live CD4 T cells and captured the direct translocation of HIV across the virological synapse. Quantitative, high-speed three-dimensional (3D) video microscopy revealed the rapid formation of micrometer-sized "buttons" containing oligomerized viral Gag protein. Electron microscopy showed that these buttons were packed with budding viral crescents. Viral transfer events were observed to form virus-laden internal compartments within target cells. Continuous time-lapse monitoring showed preferential infection through synapses. Thus, HIV dissemination may be enhanced by virological synapse-mediated cell adhesion coupled to viral endocytosis.

¹ Division of Infectious Diseases, Department of Medicine, Immunology Institute, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York, NY 10029, USA.
² Department of Pathology, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York, NY 10029, USA.
³ NSF Center for Biophotonics Science and Technology, University of California Davis (UCD), Sacramento, CA 95817, USA.
⁴ Department of Internal Medicine, University of California Davis Medical Center, Sacramento, CA 95817, USA.

^* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: ben.chen@mssm.edu

Source

• An interesting informative presentation with numerous videos:
  

[SNIP]
It turns out that HIV doesn't work like this (mostly). In fact, it operates more much more sneakily -- like special forces -- viral ninjas, if you will. Instead of spreading out in the blood, HIV viruses transfer between infected cells through a structure called a virological synapse. (To be accurate, HIV does infect cells in a cell-free form -- this is discussed in the Introduction of the paper. However, cell-to-cell transfer of HIV is up to a thousand times more efficient and inhibiting it inhibits viral replication.)

http://scienceblogs.com/purepedantry/2009/03/watch_hiv_t-cell_transfer_live.php

Nanoparticles Open Door to Cancer Prevention

3/30/2009 7:04:59 AM

Perhaps the best way to fight cancer is to prevent it from developing in the first place, and based on newly published research from investigators at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, nanoparticles may be able to make cancer chemoprevention a reality. Using nanoparticles made of a biocompatible polymer, the investigators were able to encapsulate a molecule isolated from green tea that triggers apoptosis and inhibits angiogenesis, two key biochemical events that could prevent cancer. Hasan Mukhtar, Ph.D., led the team that published its results in the journal Cancer Research.

One of the chief issues in chemoprevention—the use of biologically active molecules to thwart cancer before it gains a foothold in the body—is that any such agents must be exceedingly safe, since it is likely that a person at risk for cancer would need to take the chemopreventive agent on a regular basis for a long time. Because of this requirement, many investigators have been screening naturally occuring molecules for chemopreventive activity. One such molecule, the green tea component epigallocatechin-3-gallate (EGCG), has demonstrated chemopreventive potential in a wide range of in vitro and in vivo studies. However, the body rapidly degrades this compound, limiting its clinical utility.

The Wisconsin team solved this problem using nanoparticles. When the investigators loaded biocompatible polymer nanoparticles with EGCG, they boosted its cancer-preventing activity by more than tenfold. Additional experiments confirmed that this increase resulted from a significantly longer half-life for EGCG in the body. This longer half-life correlated with a reduction in serum prostate-specific antigen levels in animals with implanted human prostate tumors.

This work, which is detailed in the paper “Introducing nanochemoprevention as a novel approach for cancer control: proof of principle with green tea polyphenol epigallocatechin-3-gallate,” was supported by the National Cancer Institute. Investigators from the Albany College of Pharmacy in New York also participated in this study. An abstract of this paper is available at the journal’s Web site.

View abstract.

Source

Zinc-Oxide Nanoparticles - Remarkable Breakthrough in Cancer Treatment

Boise State researchers have made a remarkable breakthrough in cancer treatment that may provide the "magic bullet" for the debilitating effects of chemotherapy.

The interdisciplinary group of researchers applied emerging nanotechnology techniques to traditional cancer research to come up with a highly effective method for the preferential killing of cancer cells while leaving ordinary cells healthy. This nanobiotechnology group is led by Boise State physics professor Alex Punnoose with strong contributions from biology professors Denise Wingett and Kevin Feris.

“One of the greatest challenges preventing advances in new therapeutic options for treating cancer is the inability of anticancer drugs to effectively differentiate between cancerous and normal healthy body cells,” said Wingett, a cancer researcher. “Many commonly used chemotherapeutic drugs target rapidly dividing cells but suffer from a relatively low therapeutic index, which is the ratio of toxic dose to effective dose.”

But the group discovered that zinc-oxide nanoparticles can preferentially kill cancer cells without impacting normal cells, a discovery that could potentially treat the cancer without the side effects caused by chemotherapy.

The group’s discovery is described in the paper “Preferential Killing of Cancer Cells and Activated Human T Cells Using ZnO Nanoparticles,” published in the July edition of the journal Nanotechnology. The paper has garnered significant attention in the scientific community, being downloaded more than 250 times in the first month of its publication, making it one of most popular articles in the 58 journals published by the Institute of Physics, the publisher of the journal Nanotechnology.

The article can be found at http://stacks.iop.org/0957-4484/19/295103.

“Until now, no group in the world has been able to produce inherent selective cancer-killing ability in nanoparticles,” Wingett said. “Current chemotherapy drugs typically consist of single molecules and do not provide much room for manipulation of the molecule. But nanoparticles can be modified so that certain characteristics, like cancer-killing attributes, can be accentuated. Because of this, we think there is room for improvement in what we have already demonstrated.”

Wingett said the selectivity of these nanomaterials may be enhanced by linking tumor-targeting proteins such as monoclonal antibodies, peptides, and small molecules to tumor-associated proteins, or by using nanoparticles for drug delivery. In addition to these future directions, the research team is exploring the possibility of altering the nanoparticles to further improve their inherent ability to kill cancer cells while sparing normal healthy body cells.

Cancer researchers across the country have taken notice of the work. Jame Abraham, the hematology/oncology section chief, director of the Comprehensive Breast Cancer Program and medical director at Mary Babb Randolph Cancer Center at West Virginia University, said that while more study is needed, the breakthrough has great promise.

“Oncology is always looking for a magic bullet, which can kill only the cancer cells, not killing the normal cells. This work is a major step toward that,” Abraham said. “I think this work will pave the way for more targeted therapies.”

The promise of the work has also helped the nanobiotech research group land a $503,000 National Science Foundation grant to acquire a fluorescent activated cell sorter that will give the research group greater ability to identify, analyze and sort nanoparticles.

In addition to enhancing this particular cancer research, the new equipment would support the research activity of at least 16 other Boise State researchers in the sciences, environmental health and engineering, as well as research being done at Northwest Nazarene University, the College of Idaho, the Boise Veterans Administration Medical Center, the Mountain States Tumor and Medical Research Institute and the local biotechnology industry.

Posted August 31st, 2008

Source

(WO/2009/039508) PREFERENTIAL KILLING OF CANCER CELLS AND ACTIVATED HUMAN T CELLS USING ZNO NANOPARTICLES

CLAIMS

What we claim is:

1. A method for preferentially killing cancer cells relative to normal cells by treating the cells with zinc oxide nanoparticles.

2. A method for preferentially killing activated T cells relative to unactivated T cells by treating the cells with zinc oxide nanoparticles.

3. A method for treating cancer by treating the patient with zinc oxide nanoparticles.

4. A method for treating autoimmune disease by treating the patient with zinc oxide nanoparticles.

Watching cells die

Published: 26 March 2009 10:15 AM

Source: The Engineer Online

The viscosity of different parts of cancer cells increases dramatically when they are blasted with light-activated cancer drugs, according to new images that provide fundamental insights into how cancer cells die.

The images, taken by researchers from Imperial College London, reveal the physical changes that occur inside cancer cells while they are dying as a result of Photodynamic Therapy (PDT). This cancer treatment uses light to activate a drug that creates a short-lived toxic type of oxygen, called singlet oxygen, which kills cancerous cells.

The research team behind the study says that revealing what happens to viscosity within a dying cancer cell is important because it helps give a better understanding of how cells function and which factors are important for controlling reactions inside cells. Ultimately, this could help scientists design more efficient drugs for Photodynamic Therapy and other treatments.

The research is also of wider significance because these are the first ever real-time maps showing viscosity changing over a period of time inside a cell during a biologically important process such as cell death.

Previous studies have shown that the viscosity of human cells and organs also changes in patients with diseases such as diabetes and atherosclerosis, said Dr Marina Kuimova from Imperial College London's Department of Chemistry, who carried out the research.

'We're still not quite sure exactly what the relationship is between increased stickiness inside cells and disease, but we expect that the two are related,' added Kuimova.

'Knowing more about these changes, and being able to map them when they occur in all kinds of different scenarios, from dying cancer cells, to diseased blood cells, could help us to better understand how some diseases and their treatments affect cell and organ function.'

Dr Kuimova and her colleagues were able to track viscosity as it changed inside live cancer cells thanks to a newly developed Photodynamic Therapy drug, with unusual fluorescent properties. The drug, which is made of a molecule with a spinning component like a rotor, emits different wavelengths of light depending on the viscosity of its surroundings.

The changing wavelengths of light emitted during experiments, and captured over a period of 10 minutes, showed that once the PDT drug was activated, the level of viscosity inside the cell increased dramatically. The researchers suggest that this increasing viscosity is caused by the toxic oxygen molecules released into the cell.

They think that increased levels of viscosity might even contribute directly to the cancer cell's further deterioration by slowing down vital communication and transport processes inside the cell.

Dr Stanley Botchway from the Science and Technology Facilities Council, which worked in collaboration with Imperial College London on the research, said: 'The huge viscosity we measured was surprising and it certainly gives a new insight into the change in cellular environment during cell death.'

However, the researchers noted that as viscosity in the cancerous cell increases, the toxic oxygen molecule's mission to kill the cell is slowed down too.

Dr Kuimova explained: 'It looks like while the increasing viscosity contributes to the cell's demise, these new "sticky" cell conditions can slow the drug down, so it’s not as straightforward a relationship as it might first appear.

'More work is needed to better understand the complex interplay between viscosity and cell death. We hope to use our imaging technique to track changes in viscosity in other kinds of cells as they occur in real time, to unlock some of the secrets of what goes on inside cells when they're functioning, malfunctioning or dying.'

The research was led by Imperial College London in collaboration with the Science and Technology Facilities Council's Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL), Oxford University, King's College London, and the University of Aarhus in Denmark.

The work was funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, with support from the Science and Technology Facilities Council, and the Danish Foundation for Basic Research.

Source

The NANO

YouTube Video

Photodynamic therapy with meta-tetrahydroxyphenylchlorin

Photodynamic therapy with meta-tetrahydroxyphenylchlorin (Foscan®) in the management of squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck: experience with 35 patients

Kai Johannes Lorenz¹ and Heinz Maier¹

(1)	Department of Otolaryngology/Head and Neck Surgery, German Armed Forces Hospital of Ulm, Oberer Eselsberg 40, 89081 Ulm, Germany

Received: 27 October 2008 Accepted: 26 February 2009 Published online: 17 March 2009

Abstract Photodynamic therapy (PDT) is a relatively new method of treating superficial tumours of the skin and mucosa. After the injection of a photosensitising agent, the tumour area is exposed to non-thermal laser light. This causes a phototoxic reaction, producing oxygen radicals that destroy tumour cells. From November 2003 to July 2007, a total of 35 patients with recurrent squamous cell carcinoma or secondary tumours of the head and neck region were treated with PDT at the German Armed Forces Hospital in Ulm. These patients had failed or found unsuitable for other treatments. Meta-tetrahydroxyphenylchlorin (mTHPC), known under the trade name of Foscan^®, was used as the photosensitising agent. Local control was achieved in 21 patients (60%) and partial remission in 10 patients (28.5%). Four patients (11.5%) did not respond to PDT treatment. The mean duration of overall survival was 401.45 (±321.2) days, median was 356 after the completion of treatment. The mean duration of recurrence-free survival was 327.7 (±131.1) days, median was 181 for patients with complete remission. None of the patient developed serious complications. Photodynamic therapy is an important treatment option for patients who present with recurrent carcinoma or secondary tumours of the upper aerodigestive tract and who have failed or unsuitable for other treatments. Due to the excellent treatment results that have been achieved so far, PDT may in the future also play a role in the primary treatment of superficial tumours of the oral cavity, pharynx and larynx.

Keywords Photodynamic therapy - Foscan - mTHPC - Head and neck tumours - Squamous cell carcinoma

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Kai Johannes Lorenz Email: kai.lorenz@extern.uni-ulm.de

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Hollow gold nanospheres show promise for biomedical and other applications

Public release date: 22-Mar-2009

Contact: Tim Stephens
stephens@ucsc.edu
831-459-2495
University of California - Santa Cruz

SALT LAKE CITY, UT--A new metal nanostructure developed by researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz, has already shown promise in cancer therapy studies and could be used for chemical and biological sensors and other applications as well.

The hollow gold nanospheres developed in the laboratory of Jin Zhang, a professor of chemistry and biochemistry at UCSC, have a unique set of properties, including strong, narrow, and tunable absorption of light. Zhang is collaborating with researchers at the University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center, who have used the new nanostructures to target tumors for photothermal cancer therapy. They reported good results from preclinical studies earlier this year (Clinical Cancer Research, February 1, 2009).

Zhang will describe his lab's work on the hollow gold nanospheres in a talk on Sunday, March 22, at the annual meeting of the American Chemical Society in Salt Lake City.

"What makes this structure special is the combination of the spherical shape, the small size, and the strong absorption in visible and near infrared light," Zhang said. "The absorption is not only strong, it is also narrow and tunable. All of these properties are important for cancer treatment."

Zhang's lab is able to control the synthesis of the hollow gold nanospheres to produce particles with consistent size and optical properties. The hollow particles can be made in sizes ranging from 20 to 70 nanometers in diameter, which is an ideal range for biological applications that require particles to be incorporated into living cells. The optical properties can be tuned by varying the particle size and wall thickness.

In the cancer studies, led by Chun Li of the M. D. Anderson Cancer Center, researchers attached a short peptide to the nanospheres that enabled the particles to bind to tumor cells. After injecting the nanospheres into mice with melanoma, the researchers irradiated the animals' tumors with near-infrared light from a laser, heating the gold nanospheres and selectively killing the cancer cells to which the particles were bound.

Cancer therapy was not the goal, however, when Zhang's lab began working several years ago on the synthesis and characterization of hollow gold nanospheres. Zhang has studied a wide range of metal nanostructures to optimize their properties for surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS). SERS is a powerful optical technique that can be used for sensitive detection of biological molecules and other applications.

Adam Schwartzberg, then a graduate student in Zhang's lab at UCSC, initially set out to reproduce work reported by Chinese researchers in 2005. In the process, he perfected the synthesis of the hollow gold nanospheres, then demonstrated and characterized their SERS activity.

"This process is able to produce SERS-active nanoparticles that are significantly smaller than traditional nanoparticle structures used for SERS, providing a sensor element that can be more easily incorporated into cells for localized intracellular measurements," Schwartzberg, now at UC Berkeley, reported in a 2006 paper published in Analytical Chemistry.

The collaboration with Li began when Zhang heard him speak at a conference about using solid nanoparticles for photothermal cancer therapy. Zhang immediately saw the advantages of the hollow gold nanospheres for this technique. Li uses near-infrared light in the procedure because it provides good tissue penetration. But the solid gold nanoparticles he was using do not absorb near-infrared light efficiently. Zhang told Li he could synthesize hollow gold nanospheres that absorb light most efficiently at precisely the wavelength (800 nanometers) emitted by Li's near-infrared laser.

"The heat that kills the cancer cells depends on light absorption by the metal nanoparticles, so more efficient absorption of the light is better," Zhang said. "The hollow gold nanospheres were 50 times more effective than solid gold nanoparticles for light absorption in the near-infrared."

Zhang's group has been exploring other nanostructures that can be synthesized using the same techniques. For example, graduate student Tammy Olson has designed hollow double-nanoshell structures of gold and silver, which show enhanced SERS activities compared to the hollow gold nanospheres.

The ability to tune the optical properties of the hollow nanospheres makes them highly versatile, Zhang said. "It is a unique structure that offers true advantages over other nanostructures, so it has a lot of potential," he said.

Source

Monoclonal antibodies primed to become potent immune weapons against cancer

March 20th, 2009

New research suggests that monoclonal antibody therapy of cancer can be improved to be much more powerful than it is today, says a researcher at Georgetown University Medical Center's Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center in the March 21 issue of the Lancet.

"We believe that antibody therapy has the capacity to immunize people against cancer," says Louis Weiner, MD, director of the cancer center at GUMC and an internationally recognized expert in development and use of monoclonal antibodies. "Treatment modifications might be able to prolong, amplify, and shape a continuous immune response to cancer cells."

Weiner was asked by Lancet editors to write a review article discussing the newest research in this field. His co-authors are Madhav Dhodapkar, MD, of Yale University and Soldano Ferrone, MD, of the University of Pittsburgh.

Their analysis, based on reviewing the last eight years of research on monoclonal antibody treatment, suggests that a new era in use of these therapies is just around the corner. "Scientists have been able to use new tools to measure effectiveness of these therapies, and have found that antibodies are capable of stimulating the immune system in ways that had not been appreciated to date, and which we can now take advantage of," Weiner says.

Antibodies are immune system proteins that seek out and neutralize molecules they recognize as foreign to a body, such as viruses and bacteria. Monoclonal antibodies are proteins crafted in a laboratory to recognize specific receptors, or antigens, on cancer cells; some antigens promote uncontrolled growth. These antibodies are designed to both attach to cancer receptors to inhibit their function and to alert and activate the immune system to the presence of these receptor proteins.

Monoclonal antibodies already offer effective treatment for a wide range of cancers, including breast cancer (Herceptin®, Avastin®), colorectal cancer (Erbitux®, Avastin), lung cancer (Avastin), and blood cancers (Rituxan®, Campath®), but they have appeared to primarily work by forcing tumor related receptors to shut down pro-growth signals, Weiner says.

"For years it has been presumed that the ability of antibodies to interfere with malignant cell-related signaling is the dominant mechanism of anticancer activity, but we have also known that the normal job of an antibody is to deliver an antigen to the body's immune system which then destroys the target," Weiner says.

Recent research by Weiner and others, however, now shows that antibodies can inhibit function not only as signaling manipulators but also as initiators of immune responses that leads to control of cancer, the authors say.

"We believe that Herceptin and Rituxan, as examples, work in part by immunizing people against cancer, but at this point, the magnitude of that response is variable and is frequently very small," Weiner says.

Scientists now believe that it will be possible to alter the antibodies so that they induce both kinds of human immunity - the innate immune response that is short-lasting and which directly kills tumor cells, and a long-lasting "memory" response that comes from the adaptive immune response. "We have long thought that monoclonal antibodies are capable of stimulating the innate immune system, but we now have evidence that the therapy can prime an adaptive response as well. Such responses would make the treatment much more powerful, capable of keeping cancer under control," he says.

"For the first time we are using technology that can measure the immune response that is occurring in monoclonal antibody treatment, and which will help us build better antibodies that amplify and shape that immune response to become more powerful," Weiner says.

And in the future, it may be possible to build antibodies that are targeted to existing targets on a patient's tumor, as well as to targets that may appear as the cancer mutates. "This one-two punch would anticipate how the tumor changes over time and cut off the cancer's escape route," Weiner says. "These new directions are very exciting."

Source: Georgetown University Medical Center

Source

Photoelectrochemical efficiency of titania photoanodes enhanced

Mar 5, 2009

Hydrogen production from sunlight by splitting water using photoelectrochemical electrolysis is the most direct method for solar-to-hydrogen conversion. Looking at the process in more detail, nanotubular titania (TiO₂) emerges as one of the most promising photo-anode materials for water splitting using solar radiation thanks to the combination of a band structure that straddles the reduction and oxidation potential of water, a high corrosion resistance in aqueous electrolytes and the material's low cost.

Photocurrent density of nanotubular titania

So far, so good. However, the large bandgap of TiO₂ (3.0–3.2 eV) allows photoconversion of only UV radiation, which comprises less than 7% of the solar energy spectrum. Thus, bandgap reduction of TiO₂ is a key requirement for effective solar-to-hydrogen conversion.

In a recent study published in Nanotechnology, researchers at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and the University of Nevada, Reno, developed a process based on nanostructure synthesis and plasma surface modification to enhance the photoelectrochemical conversion efficiency of titania photoanodes.

Titania photoanodes with nanotubular structures were synthesized by electrochemical anodization of titanium thin foils. The photoanode surfaces were then subjected to low-pressure nitrogen plasma. It was found that the plasma treatment significantly enhanced the photoelectrochemical activity of the samples; the photocurrent density of plasma treated material was approximately 80% higher than that of the control electrodes.

The plasma treatment removed surface contaminants, minimized the charge carrier traps and provided n-type doping of the photonaode surface with nitrogen. The increase in photoactivity was ascribed to the surface modifications by plasma treatment and increased absorption of visible light due to nitrogen doping of the photoanode surface, narrowing the bandgap. XPS analysis confirmed doping of nitrogen in the TiO₂ surface. Plasma treatments also increased surface roughness and wettabilty, resulting in a higher electrode/electrolyte interfacial contact area for enhancing electrolysis.

While plasma surface doping does not hinder an efficient transport of charge carrier through the bulk material, further advancement of the method is needed to provide effective n-doping over the depth of the depletion layer for efficient light absorption and charge separation.

Based on its results, the group believes that a synergistic combination of nanostructure synthesis of photoanodes and surface structure and chemical modification may advance photoelectrochemical generation of hydrogen using photostable semiconducting electrodes.

About the author

This work was performed at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and University of Nevada, Reno, and was supported by the United States Department of Energy and Arkansas Science and Technology Authority. Dr Rajesh Sharma is a Research Faculty at the Graduate Institute of Technology at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. Prajna P Das and Vishal Mahajan are graduate students at the University of Nevada, Reno. Dr Mano Misra is professor at the Department of Chemical and Metallurgical Engineering at the University of Nevada, Reno. Jacob Bock is an undergraduate student at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. Dr Steve Trigwell is manager of the Applied Science and Technology Laboratories at ASRC Aerospace, in the Kennedy Space Center, Florida. Dr Alexandru Biris and Dr Malay Mazumder are assistant professor and Emeritus professor respectively at the Applied Science Department at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.

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Nano Team Increases Efficiency of Sun-to-Fuel Process

Libraries Science News		Keywords NANOTECHNOLOGY, FUEL CELLS SOLAR CONVERSION
Contact Information Available for logged-in reporters only
Description Researchers find great promise in a process that could use solar energy to use hydrogen, the third most abundant element on earth's surface, as the ultimate alternative to fossil fuels. This process increase dramatically the efficiency of titania photoanodes used to convert solar energy into hydrogen in fuel cells.

Newswise — Researchers at UALR -- the University of Arkansas at Little Rock -- said they have developed a process involving nanostructure that shows great promise in boosting the efficiency of titania photoanodes used to convert solar energy into hydrogen in fuel cells.

Hydrogen, the third most abundant element on earth’s surface, has long been recognized as the ultimate alternative to fossil fuels as an energy carrier. Automobiles using hydrogen directly or in fuel cells have already been developed, but the biggest challenge has been how to produce hydrogen using renewable sources of energy.

Scientists in Japan discovered in 1970 that semiconductor oxide photoanodes can harness the photons from solar radiation and used them to split a water molecule into hydrogen and oxygen, but process was too inefficient to be viable.

The UALR team, working with researchers at the University of Nevada, Reno, and supported by the U.S. Department of Energy and the Arkansas Science and Technology Authority (ASTA), has reported an 80 percent increase in efficiency with a new process.

The new process has been outlined in a recent study published in the journal Nanotechnology and also reported on the website Nanotechweb.org.

Electrochemical methods were utilized to synthesize titania photoanodes with nanotubular structures. The photoanode surfaces were then subjected to low-pressure nitrogen plasma to modify their surface properties. The plasma treatment increased the light absorption by the photoanode surface. It also removed surface impurities that are detrimental for photoelectrochemical hydrogen production.

“The plasma treatment significantly enhanced the photo electrochemical activity of the samples,” said Dr. Rajesh Sharma, assistant research professor in applied science in UALR’s Donaghey College of Engineering and Information Technology (EIT). “The photocurrent density of plasma treated material was approximately 80 percent higher than that of the control electrodes.”

Sharma’s highly interdisciplinary research interests encompass materials science, electrostatics, and particulate technology. He developed an atmospheric pressure plasma reactor for surface modification of materials in a variety of applications.

In addition to his work on nanostructured materials for photoelectrochemical processes, he is also working on development of an electrodynamic screen for dust mitigation application for future Mars and Lunar missions.

In addition to Sharma, the project team includes Drs. Alexandru Biris, assistant professor in applied science and chief science officer of Nanotechnology Center at UALR; UALR Professor-emeritus Malay Mazumder, and UALR undergraduate student Jacob Bock of Cabot.

Team members in Nevada include Dr. Mano Misra in the Department of Chemical and Metallurgical Engineering at UNR, and graduate students Prajna P. Das and Vishal Mahajan at the UNR.

Dr. Steve Trigwell, manager of the Applied Science and Technology Laboratories at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, also participated in the research.

Source

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Now - as to Applied Nanotech (APNT) - is Yaniv et al's TiO2 work relevant?:

United States Patent 7,300,634
Yaniv , et al. November 27, 2007
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=7,300,634.PN.&OS=PN/7,300,634&RS=PN/7,300,634

PhotoScrub®
http://www.appliednanotech.net/TechnologyPlatforms/materials/PhotoScrub-R.asp

• I envisage an energy source like that proposed above creating H2 from H2O using titanium oxide WITH APNT's ASSISTANCE AND INVOLVEMENT. Perhaps I am expecting too much...but I'd still like to see it. It's pretty important and would make all our hopes and desires come to fruition. We helped replace oil with something better, cheaper and from Texas, too. ;-)

Nanotechnology may offer alternative to radiation for cancer patients

Last Updated: Wednesday, March 18, 2009 | 5:35 PM ET

CBC News

Nanotechnology, the science of the really small, is already applied in hundreds of consumer products to enhance colour and durability of paints or make socks less smelly, but it's real promise may lie in medicine.

Scientists can use nanoparticles created in a laboratory that are tens of thousands of times smaller than the width of a strand of hair to deliver drugs deep into the body, penetrating membranes in ways no pill has been able to do.

A nanoparticle can be attached to antibodies or chemicals that recognize tumour cells and can target and kill cancer cells but spare surrounding tissue.

Jie Chen, a nanotechnology engineer at the University of Alberta, is using nanotechnology to develop new cancer treatments that could one day replace radiation and chemotherapy. He is doing experiments with injected nanoparticles that contain a bamboo compound that is sensitive to ultrasound.

"So when the ultrasound is used and treated or targetted towards these compounds, then you will activate and generate something which can destroy the cancer so it's much safer compared to conventional radiation."

Dr. Nils Petersen, director general of the National Institute for Nanotechnology in Edmonton said nanotech promises better, faster and cheaper ways of diagnosing and treating disease, developing drugs — even regrowing teeth.

.......

The researchers in Edmonton are starting to organize a human trial of the ultrasound cancer treatment, saying they are eager to put nanotechnology to work in medicine.

Source

Nanoparticle self-lighting photodynamic therapy for deep cancer treatment

Author: 佚名
UpdateTime: 2008-9-21 20:18:33 Hits: 231 Keyword: photodynamic, cancer treatment

Posted February 13 2008

(Nanowerk Spotlight) Photodynamic therapy (PDT) is a cancer treatment that combines a chemical compound, called a photosensitizer, with a particular type of light to kill cancer cells. The treatment works like this: the photosensitizing agent is injected into the bloodstream. The agent is absorbed by cells all over the body, but stays in cancer cells longer than it does in normal cells. One to three days after injection, when most of the agent has left normal cells but remains in cancer cells, the tumor is exposed to light. The photosensitizer in the tumor absorbs the light and produces an active form of oxygen (singlet oxygen) that destroys nearby cancer cells. PDT has been used for the past 30 years and is a treatment that works. PDT takes very little time, is often done as an outpatient, can be accurately targeted to the affected area, can be repeated, and has no long-term side effects. It also isn't as expensive or invasive as some other cancer treatment options. The limitation of this form of cancer treatment is that the light needed to activate most photosensitizers cannot pass through more than one centimeter of tissue. For this reason, PDT is usually used to treat tumors on or just under the skin or on the lining of internal organs or cavities. PDT is also less effective in treating large or deep tumors, because the light cannot pass far into these tumors. Researchers have now proposed a new PDT system in which the light is generated by x-ray scintillation nanoparticles with attached photosensitizers. When the nanoparticle-photosensitizer conjugates are targeted to tumors and stimulated by x-rays during radiotherapy, the particles generate visible light that can activate the photosensitizers for photodynamic therapy. Therefore, the radiation and photodynamic therapies are combined and occur simultaneously, and the tumor destruction can be more efficient. More importantly, it can be used for deep tumor treatment as x-rays can penetrate through tissue.

"I have been working on nanotechnologies for 15 years" Dr. Wei Chen tells Nanowerk. "My original work was trying to use quantum dots for in vivo imaging. I was facing the challenge of light penetration. I also have experience with the design and synthesis scintillation nanoparticles. I knew light delivery was also a challenging issue for PDT, just like in vivo optical imaging. Then, I came up with the idea to combine photodynamic therapy with radiation therapy through scintillation nanoparticles for deep cancer treatment."

Chen, an assistant professor of Nano-Bio Physics at the University of Texas at Arlington, points out that photodynamic therapy is not new, and radiation therapy is not new; but the combination of both through scintillation nanoparticles is new and potentially important for deep cancer treatment. He introduced the concept in a paper in the Journal of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology in April 2006 ("Using Nanoparticles to Enable Simultaneous Radiation and Photodynamic Therapies for Cancer Treatment").

Although PDT has been widely used for skin cancer treatment, its application for deep cancer treatment is still a challenging issue because the light for PDT activation cannot penetrate deep into the tissue. To solve this problem, Chen and his collaborators propose a new PDT system in which the light is generated by scintillation luminescence nanoparticles (such as X-ray luminescence nanoparticles) with the attached photosensitizers.

Chen explains that, when the nanoparticle-photosensitizer conjugates are targeted to a tumor and stimulated by X-ray or other radiation sources during radiation therapy, the particles will generate light (energy) to activate the photosensitizers. With this novel therapeutic approach, no external light is necessary to activate the photosensitizing agent within tumors. Tissue thickness therefore would no longer be a limiting issue for PDT.

"Effectively, the radiation and photodynamic therapies are combined and occur simultaneously, and the tumor destruction will be more effective" he says. "More importantly, it can be used for deep tumor treatment as X-ray can penetrate deep into the tissue. No external light is necessary to deliver to the tumor and only an extremely low dose of radiation is needed for the treatment. Therefore, this provides a simple but more efficient modality for cancer treatment. We called this new modality Nanoparticle Self-Lighting Photodynamic Therapy."

Working with Chen's group are Dr. Shaopeng Wang and Dr. Yuanfang Liu, senior research scientists at ICx/Nomadics Inc.; Dr. Alan G. Joly, an optical physicist and a senior scientist at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory; and Dr. Carey Pope, Regents Professor And Head Sitlington Chair In Toxicology at the Center for Veterinary Health Sciences, Oklahoma State University.

The researchers reported their findings in a recent paper published in the January 29, 2008 online edition of Applied Physics Letters ("Investigation of water-soluble x-ray luminescence nanoparticles for photodynamic activation").

Their pilot studies indicate that water-soluble scintillation nanoparticles (the particle size in the study was about 15 nm) can potentially be used to activate photodynamic therapy as a promising deep cancer treatment modality.

For practical applications, the nanoparticle-porphyrin conjugates must be delivered to the tumor cells in vehicles such as antibodies, peptides, liposomes or other functional molecules. In designing the delivery vehicles one needs to consider how they will affect the quantum yield of singlet oxygen. Chen and his team used folic acid to target folate receptors at tumor cells. Their results indicate that folic acid has no effect on the quantum yield of singlet oxygen production in the nanoparticle conjugates, making this system practical for photodynamic activation applications.

Initial results of the studies have been promising. But before Nanoparticle Self-Lighting Photodynamic Therapy becomes a clinical reality, the researchers must overcome two main challenges: 1) they need to develop a class of water-soluble scintillation nanoparticles with very high quantum efficiencies of X-ray luminescence, and 2) they need to improve the targeting capabilities of the nanoparticle- photosensitizer compound – but this is a challenge for all drug-based cancer treatments.

By Michael Berger. Copyright 2008 Nanowerk LLC

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Waking up dormant HIV

March 16th, 2009

HAART (highly active anti-retroviral therapy) has emerged as an extremely effective HIV treatment that keeps virus levels almost undetectable; however, HAART can never truly eradicate the virus as some HIV always remains dormant in cells. But, a chemical called suberoylanilide hydroxamic acid (SAHA), recently approved as a leukemia drug, has now been shown to 'turn on' latent HIV, making it an attractive candidate to weed out the hidden virus that HAART misses.

Matija Peterlin at UCSF and colleagues had previously identified another chemical called HMBA that could activate latent HIV, but the risk of several toxic side effects made HMBA clinically non-viable. However, the chemically similar SAHA had received FDA approval, making it a potentially safer alternate.

So, the researchers examined whether SAHA had any effect on HIV latency. They found that SAHA could indeed stimulate latent HIV to begin replicating, which exposes the infected cell to HAART drugs. SAHA could activate HIV in both laboratory cells as well as from blood samples taken from HIV patients on antiretroviral therapy. Importantly, this successful activation was achieved using clinical doses of SAHA, suggesting toxicity will not be a problem.

More information: This study appeared in the March 13 issue of Journal of Biological Chemistry, "Suberoylanilide hydroxamic acid reactivates HIV from latently infected cells" by Xavier Contreras, Marc Schwenker, Chin-Shih Chen, Joseph M. McCune, Steven G. Deeks, Jeffrey Martin, and B. Matija Peterlin

Article link: http://www.jbc.org/cgi/content/full/284/11/6782

Source: American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology

http://www.physorg.com/news156424517.html

Suberoylanilide Hydroxamic Acid Reactivates HIV from Latently Infected Cells^*

Originally published In Press as doi:10.1074/jbc.M807898200 on January 9, 2009 J. Biol. Chem., Vol. 284, Issue 11, 6782-6789, March 13, 2009

Xavier Contreras¹, Marc Schweneker², Ching-Shih Chen^¶, Joseph M. McCune³, Steven G. Deeks^||, Jeffrey Martin^**, and B. Matija Peterlin⁴

From the Department of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco, California 94143, Division of Experimental Medicine, ^||HIV/AIDS Division, and ^**Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, San Francisco General Hospital, University of California, San Francisco, California 94143, and ^¶Division of Medicinal Chemistry, College of Pharmacy, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 43210

Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) persists in a latent form in infected individuals treated effectively with highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART). In part, these latent proviruses account for the rebound in viral replication observed after treatment interruption. A major therapeutic challenge is to purge this reservoir. In this study, we demonstrate that suberoylanilide hydroxamic acid (SAHA) reactivates HIV from latency in chronically infected cell lines and primary cells. Indeed, P-TEFb, a critical transcription cofactor for HIV, is released and then recruited to the viral promoter upon stimulation with SAHA. The phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase/Akt pathway is involved in the initiation of these events. Using flow cytometry-based single cell analysis of protein phosphorylation, we demonstrate that SAHA activates this pathway in several subpopulations of T cells, including memory T cells that are the major viral reservoir in peripheral blood. Importantly, SAHA activates HIV replication in peripheral blood mononuclear cells from individuals treated effectively with HAART. Thus SAHA, which is a Food and Drug Administration-approved drug, might be considered to accelerate the decay of the latent reservoir in HAART-treated infected humans.

---

Received for publication, October 15, 2008 , and in revised form, January 9, 2009.

^* This work was supported, in whole or in part, by National Institutes of Health Grants AI49104 and AI058708 (to B. M. P.) and R01 AI40312 and AI47062 (to J. M. M.). This work was also supported by the University of California, San Francisco, Center for AIDS Research Grants P30 AI027763, P30 MH59037, and CC99-SF-001 and the University of California, San Francisco, Clinical and Translational Research Institute Grant UL1 RR024131, a component of the National Institutes of Health Roadmap for Medical Research. The costs of publication of this article were defrayed in part by the payment of page charges. This article must therefore be hereby marked "advertisement"in accordance with 18 U.S.C. Section 1734 solely to indicate this fact.

¹ Supported by a grant from the California Foundation for AIDS Research.

² Supported by the University-wide AIDS Research Program Grant F05-GI-219.

³ Recipient of National Institutes of Health Grant DPI OD00329 (Director's Pioneer Award Program, part of the National Institutes of Health Roadmap for Medical Research) and the Burroughs Wellcome Fund Clinical Scientist Award in Translational Research.

⁴ To whom correspondence should be addressed: University of California, San Francisco, 533 Parnassus Ave., Rm. U432, Box 0703, San Francisco, CA 94143. Fax: 415-502-1901; E-mail: matija.peterlin@ucsf.edu.

http://www.jbc.org/cgi/content/abstract/284/11/6782

Nanocapacitors with Big-Energy Storage

Monday, March 16, 2009

Nanocapacitors with Big-Energy Storage

Nanopore arrays combine high power and storage capacity.

By Katherine Bourzac


Nanopore power: Arrays of capacitors built inside nanopores are shown here in a scanning electron micrograph image overlaid with an illustration that shows their design. The pores are etched into an aluminum substrate (dark yellow). The capacitors form two thin layers of metal (blue) separated by a layer of insulating material (light yellow).
Credit: A. James Clark School of Engineering, University of Maryland

The ultimate electronic energy-storage device would store plenty of energy but also charge up rapidly and provide powerful bursts when needed. Sadly, today's devices can only do one or the other: capacitors provide high power, while batteries offer high storage.

Now researchers at the University of Maryland have developed a kind of capacitor that brings these qualities together. The research is in its early stages, and the device will have to be scaled up to be practical, but initial results show that it can store 100 times more energy than previous devices of its kind. Ultimately, such devices could store surges of energy from renewable sources, like wind, and feed that energy to the electrical grid when needed. They could also power electric cars that recharge in the amount of time that it takes to fill a gas tank, instead of the six to eight hours that it takes them to recharge today.

There are many different kinds of batteries and capacitors, but in general, batteries can store large amounts of energy yet tend to charge up slowly and wear out quickly. Capacitors, meanwhile, have longer lifetimes and can rapidly discharge, but they store far less total energy. Electrochemists and engineers have been working to solve this energy-storage problem by boosting batteries' power and increasing capacitors' storage capacity.

Sang Bok Lee, a chemistry professor, and Gary Rubloff, a professor of engineering and director of the Maryland NanoCenter, created nanostructured arrays of electrostatic capacitors. Electrostatic capacitors are the simplest kind of electronic-energy-storage device, says Rubloff. They store electrical charge on the surface of two metal electrodes separated by an insulating material; their storage capacity is directly proportional to the surface area of these sandwich-like electrodes. The Maryland researchers boosted the storage capacity of their capacitors by using nanofabrication to increase their total surface area. Their electrodes work in the same way as ones found in conventional capacitors, but instead of being flat, they are tubular and tucked deep inside nanopores.

The fabrication process begins with a glass plate coated with aluminum. Pores are etched into the plate by treating it with acid and applying a voltage. It's possible to make very regular arrays of tiny but deep pores, each as small as 50 nanometers in diameter and up to 30 micrometers deep, by carefully controlling the reaction conditions. The process is similar to one used to make memory chips. "Next you deposit a very thin layer of metal, then a thin layer of insulator, then another thin layer of metal into these pores," says Rubloff. These three layers act as the nanocapacitors' electrodes and insulating layer. A layer of aluminum sits on top of the device and serves as one electrical contact; the other contact is made with an underlying aluminum layer.

This "fractal-like structure greatly increases the surface area," says Joel Schindall, associate director of MIT's Laboratory for Electromagnetic and Electronic Systems, who was not involved in the work.

In a paper published online this week in the journal Nature Nanotechnology, the Maryland group describes making 125-micrometer-wide arrays, each containing one million nanocapacitors. The surface area of each array is 250 times greater than that of a conventional capacitor of comparable size. The arrays' storage capacity is about 100 microfarads per square centimeter.

But surface area isn't the only determinant of energy density. The Maryland group's nanocapacitors also benefit from the very small spacing between their electrodes, and the work is unique in this respect, says Robert Hebner, director of the Center for Electromechanics at the University of Texas at Austin. Hebner was not involved in the Maryland research.

If the electrodes are far apart, the like charges on their surfaces strongly repel each other. When the electrodes are placed closer together, the negative and positive charges on either side balance out these repulsive forces, and more total charge can be stored in a given area. The total thickness of each nanocapacitor is just 25 nanometers, and the charges can pack very close together. "It's impressive," says Hebner. "I hope they can scale it up."

So far, the nanocapacitor arrays can't store much total energy because they're so small. "Instead of making these little dots, we want to make a large area that contains billions of nanocapacitors to store large amounts of energy," says Lee. Both he and Rubloff say that scaling up to a practical level is not trivial, but the pair is working together to make larger arrays. "There are many scale-up issues," says Rubloff. "We'll look at how large we can make these and still have all of them work."

Even if this problem is solved, they'll still have to make sure that they can effectively connect multiple arrays to one another. But Hebner says that this problem is not intractable, and he points to devices on the market, including sensitive magnetic detectors, that successfully overcome similar connectivity issues.

One advantage of the new fabrication method is that the nanopore dimensions and the respective thicknesses of the electrode and insulator can be carefully controlled. "Regularity and uniformity are central to scaling nanotechnologies up to something manufacturable and commercializable," says Rubloff. "There are still major hurdles, but we're trying to decide how to commercialize this--there's definitely a thirst to do so."

Source

Letter Abstract

Nature Nanotechnology

Published online: 15 March 2009 | doi:10.1038/nnano.2009.37

Nanotubular metal–insulator–metal capacitor arrays for energy storage

Parag Banerjee^1,2, Israel Perez^1,2, Laurent Henn-Lecordier^1,2, Sang Bok Lee^3,4 & Gary W. Rubloff^1,2,5

Nanostructured devices have the potential to serve as the basis for next-generation energy systems that make use of densely packed interfaces and thin films¹. One approach to making such devices is to build multilayer structures of large area inside the open volume of a nanostructured template. Here, we report the use of atomic layer deposition to fabricate arrays of metal–insulator–metal nanocapacitors in anodic aluminium oxide nanopores. These highly regular arrays have a capacitance per unit planar area of 10 F cm^-2 for 1-m-thick anodic aluminium oxide and 100 F cm^-2 for 10-m-thick anodic aluminium oxide, significantly exceeding previously reported values for metal–insulator–metal capacitors in porous templates^{2, 3, 4, 5, 6}. It should be possible to scale devices fabricated with this approach to make viable energy storage systems that provide both high energy density and high power density.

1. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland 20742, USA
2. Institute for Systems Research, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland 20742, USA
3. Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland 20742, USA
4. Department of Nanoscience and Technology, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, 335 Gwahangno, Yuseong-gu, Daejeon 305-701, Korea
5. Institute for Research in Electronics and Applied Physics, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland 20742, USA

Correspondence to: Sang Bok Lee^3,4 e-mail: slee@umd.edu

Correspondence to: Gary W. Rubloff^1,2,5 e-mail: rubloff@umd.edu

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Re-engineered battery material could lead to rapid recharging of many devices/MIT/Ceder, Kang

3/13/2009 6:17:53 PM
Re-engineered battery material could lead to rapid recharging of many devices

MIT engineers have created a kind of beltway that allows for the rapid transit of electrical energy through a well-known battery material, an advance that could usher in smaller, lighter batteries -- for cell phones and other devices -- that could recharge in seconds rather than hours.

The work could also allow for the quick recharging of batteries in electric cars, although that particular application would be limited by the amount of power available to a homeowner through the electric grid.

The work, led by Gerbrand Ceder, the Richard P. Simmons Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, is reported in the March 12 issue of Nature. Because the material involved is not new -- the researchers have simply changed the way they make it -- Ceder believes the work could make it into the marketplace within two to three years.

State-of-the-art lithium rechargeable batteries have very high energy densities -- they are good at storing large amounts of charge. The tradeoff is that they have relatively slow power rates -- they are sluggish at gaining and discharging that energy. Consider current batteries for electric cars. "They have a lot of energy, so you can drive at 55 mph for a long time, but the power is low. You can't accelerate quickly," Ceder said.

Why the slow power rates? Traditionally, scientists have thought that the lithium ions responsible, along with electrons, for carrying charge across the battery simply move too slowly through the material.

About five years ago, however, Ceder and colleagues made a surprising discovery. Computer calculations of a well-known battery material, lithium iron phosphate, predicted that the material's lithium ions should actually be moving extremely quickly.

"If transport of the lithium ions was so fast, something else had to be the problem," Ceder said.

Further calculations showed that lithium ions can indeed move very quickly into the material but only through tunnels accessed from the surface. If a lithium ion at the surface is directly in front of a tunnel entrance, there's no problem: it proceeds efficiently into the tunnel. But if the ion isn't directly in front, it is prevented from reaching the tunnel entrance because it cannot move to access that entrance.

Ceder and Byoungwoo Kang, a graduate student in materials science and engineering, devised a way around the problem by creating a new surface structure that does allow the lithium ions to move quickly around the outside of the material, much like a beltway around a city. When an ion traveling along this beltway reaches a tunnel, it is instantly diverted into it. Kang is a coauthor of the Nature paper.

Using their new processing technique, the two went on to make a small battery that could be fully charged or discharged in 10 to 20 seconds (it takes six minutes to fully charge or discharge a cell made from the unprocessed material).

Ceder notes that further tests showed that unlike other battery materials, the new material does not degrade as much when repeatedly charged and recharged. This could lead to smaller, lighter batteries, because less material is needed for the same result.

"The ability to charge and discharge batteries in a matter of seconds rather than hours may open up new technological applications and induce lifestyle changes," Ceder and Kang conclude in their Nature paper.

This work was supported by the National Science Foundation through the Materials Research Science and Engineering Centers program and the Batteries for Advanced Transportation Program of the U.S. Department of Energy. It has been licensed by two companies. [The technology has already been licensed to two companies: the Belgian materials company Umicore, which makes the lithium particles, and a battery manufacturer.] [Ric Fulop, cofounder of Watertown battery company A123Systems, said his company had an option to license the technology. "From here to product takes a couple years, but it's very promising," Fulop said ].

Source

NPR INTERVIEW WITH Gerbrand Ceder

A123Systems Announces Plan to Build U.S.-based Lithium Ion Battery Mass Production Facilities

Planned $2.3 Billion facilities will support aggressive expansion plan to deliver energy storage systems to A123’s multiple OEM customers in the Electric and Hybrid Electric Vehicle market
Link

Nanoball Batteries Could Charge Electric Cars in 5 Minutes/MIT/Ceder, Kang

March 12th, 2009 by Lisa Zyga

Enlarge

A sample of the new battery material that could allow quick charging of portable devices. Image credit: Donna Coveney.

(PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers at MIT have designed a new battery that can recharge devices about 100 times faster than conventional lithium ion batteries. The design could lead to electric car batteries that charge in 5 minutes (compared with 8 hours in today's electric cars) and cell phone batteries that charge in just 10 seconds.

Byoungwoo Kang and Gerbrand Ceder of MIT have improved the design of a "nanoball battery," which has a cathode that is composed of nanosized balls of lithium iron phosphate. As the battery charges, the nanoballs release lithium ions that travel across an electrolyte to the anode. As the battery discharges, the opposite occurs, and the lithium ions are reabsorbed by the nanoballs in the cathode.

The key to the nanoball battery's quick charge time is the speed at which the lithium iron phosphate nanoballs in the cathode can release and absorb lithium ions. In conventional lithium ion batteries, detaching the ions from the normal cathode takes a relatively long time. By coating each nanoball with a thin layer of lithium phosphate, Kang and Ceder showed that they could detach the lithium ions from the nanoballs even quicker than previous studies have found.

To demonstrate the technology, the researchers fabricated a small battery that could be fully charged or discharged in 10 to 20 seconds, which would otherwise have taken six minutes. The scientists' tests showed that the new material degrades less than other battery materials after repeated charges and discharges. This means that the battery could be made with less material, which could possibly lead to smaller, lighter batteries.

More information: Byoungwoo Kang and Gerbrand Ceder. "Battery materials for ultrafast charging and discharging." Nature 458, 190-193 (12 March 2009), doi:10.1038/nature07853. [See below]

© 2009 PhysOrg.com

Letter

Nature 458, 190-193 (12 March 2009) | doi:10.1038/nature07853; Received 18 June 2007; Accepted 2 February 2009

Battery materials for ultrafast charging and discharging
Byoungwoo Kang¹ & Gerbrand Ceder¹

1. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA

Correspondence to: Gerbrand Ceder¹ Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to G.C. (Email: gceder@mit.edu).

The storage of electrical energy at high charge and discharge rate is an important technology in today's society, and can enable hybrid and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles and provide back-up for wind and solar energy. It is typically believed that in electrochemical systems very high power rates can only be achieved with supercapacitors, which trade high power for low energy density as they only store energy by surface adsorption reactions of charged species on an electrode material^{1, 2, 3}. Here we show that batteries^{4, 5} which obtain high energy density by storing charge in the bulk of a material can also achieve ultrahigh discharge rates, comparable to those of supercapacitors. We realize this in LiFePO₄ (ref. 6), a material with high lithium bulk mobility^{7, 8}, by creating a fast ion-conducting surface phase through controlled off-stoichiometry. A rate capability equivalent to full battery discharge in 10–20 s can be achieved.

New Shock Tech Could Zap Rioters, Cancer Cells

By David Hambling

March 09, 2009 | 12:41:44 PM

Today's Tasers stun their targets for just a few seconds. A new technique using ultra-short electric pulses could allow tomorrow's electroshock weapons to immobilize people for as long as fifteen minutes –- and may one day also be used to destroy tumors.

As I note in my latest New Scientist story, existing Tasers use an electric pulse that lasts a few microseconds, and delivers around .07 Joules of energy. This is sufficiently intense to disrupt nerve cell membranes, effectively paralyzing the neuromuscular system however tough you are. The microsecond pulses are repeated over a five-second cycle. According to Steve Tuttle of Taser International, the effects wear off almost immediately once the cycle finishes; he describes tests in which subjects have been able to carry out a task, such as pushing a specific button, immediately after being Tasered. [Others disagree, and point to all those times when coroners have ruled that the shock weapons contributed to someone's death. -- ed.]

Short-term incapacitation meets police requirements, allowing a suspect to be incapacitated for long enough to make a quick arrest. The U.S. military is looking at a longer keeping people stunned for much longer, however. The Joint Nonlethal Weapons Directorate is looking at a new generation of electroshock weapon that might knock the target down for fifteen minutes with a single ultra-short pulse.

Research is being carried out by the Frank Reidy Research Center for Bioelectrics at Old Dominion University. The Center's mission is to "to increase scientific knowledge and understanding of how electromagnetic fields and ionized gases interact with biological cells." A significant amount of their funding is military; the Center notes that their largest award was $5 million from Air Force Office of Scientific Research.

The key to the technology lies in using short pulses, which can have very different effects than the longer ones. When an electric field is applied to a cell, a charge starts to build up on the cell membranes. After a few microseconds, the charge is so high that holes (or "pores") start to form in the cell wall, an effect called electroporation. This allows material (in particular calcium ions) to pass through, affecting the function of the cell. With shorter pulses there is not enough time to affect the cell. But electroporation can affect the structures within the cell such as the nucleus, known as organelles.

"Because the organelles are much smaller than the cell itself... they reach their maximum charge much more quickly," Center founder Karl H. Schoenbach explains in an article. " Ending the pulse after the organelles are charged up, within a few hundred nanoseconds but before large pores appear in the cell’s own membrane, lets you focus the electric field’s effects on the organelles, such as the nucleus, while leaving the cell membrane relatively untouched. That, in turn, lets you do the complex and varied things medical science is interested in, such as killing tumor cells or triggering an immune system response."

So on the one hand ultra-short pulses can be used to selectively destroy cancerous cells. But they can also produce much more effective stunning effects.

A paper from the Center on Neuromuscular disruption with ultrashort electrical pulses compares 450-nanosecond pulses with multi-microsecond Taser pulses and found that the shorter pulses were more effective for suppressing voluntary movement, and used less energy. Another study found that even shorter, 60-nanosecond pulses could stun rats.

But the most significant is a paper which found that it was possible to incapacitate cells for a prolonged period -- "our study provides experimental evidence that even a single 60-ns pulse at 12 kV/cm can cause a profound and long-lasting (minutes) reduction of the cell membrane resistance (Rm), accompanied by the loss of the membrane potential." The paper says that cells could be prevented from functioning for fifteen minutes. These are early days, but researchers have suggested that a single ultrashort shock could leaving the target immobilized for "tens of minutes" using far less energy than a Taser pulse.

Obviously there are concerns over what other effects ultrashort pulses might have on the body.

"We have been advised by contacts who track the development of this type of technology that the medical and biological effects of such ultra-short electrical shocks in such a weapon are presently unknown," says Angela Wright of Amnesty International. "Stringent testing, before deployment, of the medical effects of such a weapon should take place."

"Studies are being conducted to examine the ion transport mechanisms and the effects on long term cell viability," says David B. Law of the JNLWD. He says that plans for tests on live animals are under way, but declined to comment on when human tests might happen -- if ever.

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