Can humans regrow fingers?" When a hobby-store owner in Cincinnati sliced off his fingertip in 2005 while showing a customer why the motor on his model plane was dangerous, he went to the emergency room without the missing tip. He couldn't find it anywhere. The doctor bandaged the wound and recommended a skin graft to cover the top of his right-middle stub for cosmetic purposes, since nothing could be done to rebuild the finger. Months later, he had regrown it, tissue, nerves, skin, fingernail and all. This particular hobbyist happened to have a brother in the tissue-regeneration business, who told him to forego the skin graft and instead apply a powdered extract taken from pig's bladder to the raw finger tip. Extracellular matrix is a component of body tissue that functions outside of the body's cells (thus the "extracellular" designation). In human fetuses, the substance works in concert with stem cells to grow and regrow everything from heart aortas to toes.
New Bandages Latest in Healthcare Technology - High Tech Bandages and Band-Aids ChitoGauze (Photograph courtesy of HemCon Medical Technologies, Inc.) HemCon Medical Technologies manufactures bandages and wound dressings that harness the power of the sea. The company's products use chitosan, a biopolymer made from a component in the exoskeletons of crab, shrimp and other crustacean exoskeletons. The positively charged chitosan attracts the negatively charged outer membranes of red blood cells; when the two come into contact, localized clotting occurs. HemCon's chitosan-coated bandages are already in use in Iraq; its latest product is ChitoGauze. Gecko Bandage (Photograph by Bob Langer and Jeff Karp, MIT) The ability of geckos to scale vertical surfaces comes from the special topography of their feet: nano-size hairs gives their feet an adhesive property. QuikClot (Photograph courtesy of Z-Medica Corporation) The family of QuikClot products make use of kaolin clay, a natural blood-clotter. Ultrasound Device (Photograph courtesy of George K. Scaffold Bandage Electric Bandage
Nanoengineers invent new biomaterial that more closely mimics human tissue Thursday, May 26, 2011 A new biomaterial designed for repairing damaged human tissue doesn’t wrinkle up when it is stretched. The invention from nanoengineers at the University of California, San Diego marks a significant breakthrough in tissue engineering because it more closely mimics the properties of native human tissue. Pictured: Optical images of polyethylene glycol scaffolds expanding in response to stretching.(Note: green tone added to image.) Credit: UC San Diego / Shaochen Chen A new biomaterial designed for repairing damaged human tissue doesn’t wrinkle up when it is stretched. A new biomaterial designed for repairing damaged human tissue doesn't wrinkle up when it is stretched. The new biomaterial was created using a new biofabrication platform that Chen is developing under a four-year, $1.5 million grant from the National Institutes of Health. "We are also exploring other opportunities," said Chen. Shape turned out to be essential to the new material's mechanical property.
snsanalytics Public release date: 19-Apr-2011 [ Print | E-mail Share ] [ Close Window ] Contact: David Orensteindavid_orenstein@brown.edu 401-863-1862Brown University PROVIDENCE, R.I. The story they tell in a paper in the April 20 issue of the Journal of Neuroscience is one of the byplay between two brain regions that have different takes on how incoming information should influence thinking. Researchers including Michael Frank, assistant professor of cognitive, linguistic, and psychological sciences at Brown, have studied the striatum intensely, but have been curious about the effect that the advice-influenced PFC has on its function. "We are studying how maintaining instructions in the prefrontal cortex changes the way that the striatum works," said lead author Bradley Doll, a graduate student in Frank's lab. In their experiment, the researchers studied people with and without genetic variations that affected the activity of the neurotransmitter dopamine in the PFC and striatum. [ Print | E-mail
NSF Mathematical Sciences Institutes Acute3D Cartagram — Geocoded Image Visualization — by Bloom Cartagr.am This is Cartagr.am, by Bloom . It shows popular public photos from Instagram arranged on a map. Click and drag to pan around ... Scroll with your mouse or + and - to zoom ... Search for a place name like New York , Paris or London or zoom to your current location . Labels fade in if you move the mouse, and fade out if you don't. We're hard at work on better integration with Instagram, a clearer set of labels, and an iPad app. We would love your feedback! Site © 2011 Bloom . Map labels are from Acetate , © 2011 Stamen and FortiusOne .
50 Great Examples of Data Visualization Wrapping your brain around data online can be challenging, especially when dealing with huge volumes of information. And trying to find related content can also be difficult, depending on what data you’re looking for. But data visualizations can make all of that much easier, allowing you to see the concepts that you’re learning about in a more interesting, and often more useful manner. Below are 50 of the best data visualizations and tools for creating your own visualizations out there, covering everything from Digg activity to network connectivity to what’s currently happening on Twitter. Music, Movies and Other Media Narratives 2.0 visualizes music. Liveplasma is a music and movie visualization app that aims to help you discover other musicians or movies you might enjoy. Tuneglue is another music visualization service. MusicMap is similar to TuneGlue in its interface, but seems slightly more intuitive. Digg, Twitter, Delicious, and Flickr Internet Visualizations
Relation Browser / Visualisations showing relations | valderama.net Relation Browser - Moritz Stefaner Different types of relations, different type of entities. Number of relations should not get bigger then ~25. Nice animations. "Flat" - every relation is equal. No sorting, or filtering. Ask Ken - Michael Aufreiter (Linz) In contrast to the "relation browser" (by moritz s.) here a whole graph opens. Image swirl - G. The start is a Grid View. PaperCube - Peter Bergstrom my thoughts are here Publication Map - Moritz Stefaner Publications are clustered according their cross-references of single articles. Relation Circle for Publications - Moritz Stefaner Here just one type of relation and one type of entiy is used. See infoVis Pattern .
Biomimicry Institute - Home The Biomimicry 3.8 Institute is a not-for-profit organization that promotes the study and imitation of nature’s remarkably efficient designs, bringing together scientists, engineers, architects and innovators of all ages who can use those models to create sustainable technologies. The Institute was founded in 2006 by science writer and consultant Janine Benyus in response to overwhelming interest in the subject following the publication of her book, Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature. See Janine’s TED Talk video for her groundbreaking introduction to biomimicry. Today, the Biomimicry 3.8 Institute focuses on three areas: Developing our online database of nature’s solutions, AskNature.org.Hosting our annual, international Biomimicry Student Design Challenge.Growing our Global Network of regional biomimicry practitioners. See examples of biomimicry in action! Meet executive director Beth Rattner, our staff, and the Institute board.