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An aerial view of the ITER construction site in Cadarache, France. Photograph: Agence ITER France

Issue no. 21, 2009 Published: Jun 19, 2009
Nuclear fusion power project to start in 2018
NASA launches probes to scout the moon
Lung-on-a-chip could replace countless lab rats
3D printing for new tissues and organs
Synthetic cells get together to make electronics
Light sensor breakthrough could enhance digital cameras
Do bow and arrow predate modern humans?

Nuclear fusion power project to start in 2018
An experimental reactor that could harness nuclear fusion will begin operation in southern France in 2018. The International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) should be fully operational in 2026, says the ITER Council, the project's governing body. The seven-nation council endorsed a 'phased' completion of the reactor, with a target date for 'first plasma' by the end of 2018. ITER is designed to produce 500 megawatts of power for extended periods, 10 times the energy needed to keep the energy-generating plasma at extremely high temperatures. It will also test a number of key technologies for fusion including the heating, control and remote maintenance that will be needed for a full-scale fusion power station. Preliminary trials would use only hydrogen. Key experiments using tritium and deuterium that can validate fusion as a producer of large amounts of power would not take place until 2026. Launched in 2006 after years of debate, the pilot project at Cadarache, near Marseille, has seven backers: the European Union (EU), China, India, South Korea, Japan, Russia and the United States. Kazakhstan is poised to become the eighth member. If ITER is a success, the next step would be to build a commercial reactor.
PhysOrg / AFP Jun 18, 2009	back to top

NASA launches probes to scout the moon
NASA launched an unmanned Atlas rocket on Thursday carrying a pair of probes to map the moon and hunt for water. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) carries seven science instruments, including several cameras, infrared detectors and a laser altimeter to measure topography. The satellite also carries a telescope outfitted with synthetic human skin to assess how the radiation environment may affect human health. Scientists have targeted 50 potential landing sites that will be imaged with LRO's highest-quality cameras, which are capable of seeing objects as small as about 50 centimetres in diameter. The spacecraft also will scout for minerals, make detailed temperature maps, find areas of maximum sunlight and chart the moon's topography. The agency is preparing for a new wave of human expeditions to the moon, with bigger crews, longer stays and more flexibility to select scientifically interesting landing sites. Of particular interest are the polar caps, where permanently shadowed craters may hide pockets of frozen water. Once LRO reaches the moon, it will spend about two months getting into position to begin its survey, which is scheduled to last a year. After the mapping is finished, the spacecraft is then expected to be turned over to NASA scientists for an extended two- to three-year mission.
Reuters Jun 18, 2009	back to top

Lung-on-a-chip could replace countless lab rats
'Microlungs' grown from human tissue might one day help to replace the vast numbers of rats used to check the safety of drugs, cosmetics and other chemicals. The work is part of a growing drive to develop toxicology tests based on human cells as a replacement for animal testing. Such efforts are made partly for ethical concerns, and partly because animal testing is so time-consuming and expensive. The obvious alternative is to test chemicals on human cells grown in the lab. The difficulty, however, lies in enticing those cells to form complex tissue that responds as our organs do. Researchers at the University of Cardiff, UK, have already managed to grow human lung cells into flat differentiated layers that resemble the inner lining of the lungs. But when allowed to grow in three dimensions, as in the body, cells arrange themselves very differently, and this can change how they respond to chemical stimuli. A popular approach is to seed plastic scaffolds with stem cells to grow artificial 'organs'. But the researchers have found an alternative which could allow thousands of drugs to be screened at once. Instead of large scaffolds, they have grown lung cells on the surface of plastic spheres half a millimetre in diameter, essentially producing a tiny inside-out lung around each bead. The ultimate aim is to develop a chip on which thousands of microlungs can be grown then tested simultaneously.
New Scientist Jun 17, 2009	back to top

3D printing for new tissues and organs
A more effective way to build plastic scaffolds on which new tissues and even whole organs might be grown in the laboratory is being developed by an international collaboration between teams in Portugal and the UK. The new technique known as rapid prototyping, or three-dimensional printing, could enable tissue engineering that replicates the porous and hierarchical structures of natural tissues at an unprecedented level. Scaffold structures for tissue engineering that allow researchers to grow cells in a three-dimensional way could allow medical science to create natural artificial organs. However, conventional techniques have several limitations. In particular, current scaffold construction lacks full control of the often microscopic pores and their architecture. Researchers at the Leiria Polytechnic Institute, and the University of Wolverhampton, are borrowing a technique from more conventional manufacturing to solve this problem. In rapid prototyping, a computer controls a laser that cures a vat of polymer resin layer by layer and building up a solid object. It allows designers and manufacturers to rapidly produce a prototype component created on a CAD machine. But it is the precision with which a material can be constructed that could be crucial to developing rapid prototyping as a tissue engineering technique. It overcomes many of the limitations of conventional scaffold techniques. Rapid prototyping might one day allow kidney, liver and muscle tissues to be constructed in the laboratory from a patient's own cells with close-to-natural detail ready for transplantation.
PhysOrg / International Journal of Computer Applications in Technology Jun 18, 2009	back to top

Synthetic cells get together to make electronics
A network of artificial cells that work together to act as an AC/DC converter has been built. Demonstrating that synthetic cells can team up to achieve such feats is a step towards building synthetic tissues to interface biology with electronics, according to researchers at the University of Oxford and the University of Massachusetts. Synthetic biologists have show they can reprogram living cells to make them produce drug compounds, and are even working towards building cells from scratch to create artificial life. But that work focuses on only individual cells. Now the group has made a step towards making artificial tissue in which individual synthetic cells work together. They connected together multiple artificial 'protocells' so that they share electrical signals. Like real cells, the protocells are droplets of watery fluid enclosed in an oily membrane. When two protocells are brought together, the membranes around them fuse on contact to form a double-thickness boundary membrane. To transform such groups into electronic devices, the researchers added pores to the double membranes between protocells, using a bacterial toxin that punches holes in the membranes of mammalian cells during an infection. The pores allow charged ions to flow from one protocell to another if electrodes are connected to the protocells to supply a current. Because those pores only remain open if current flows in one direction, it is possible to use the cells to form electronic circuits. By connecting four droplets together the team created a rectifier that converts alternating current into direct current.
New Scientist / Nature Nanotechnology Jun 17, 2009	back to top

Light sensor breakthrough could enhance digital cameras
New research by a team of University of Toronto scientists could lead to substantial advancements in the performance of a variety of electronic devices including digital cameras. In solar cells and digital cameras, particles of light - known as photons - are absorbed in a semiconductor, such a silicon, and generate excited electrons, known as excitons. The semiconductor chip then measures a current that flows as a result. Normally, each photon is converted into at most one exciton. This lowers the efficiency of solar cells and it limits the sensitivity of digital cameras. When a scene is dimly lit, small portable cameras like those in laptops suffer from noise and grainy images as a result of the small number excitons. The researchers created a light sensor that benefits from a phenomenon known as multi-exciton generation (MEG). Until now, no group had collected an electrical current from a device that takes advantage of MEG. Multi-exciton generation breaks the conventional rules that bind traditional semiconductor devices, according to the researchers.
EurekaAlert / University of Toronto Jun 18, 2009	back to top

Do bow and arrow predate modern humans?
Bows and arrows may not be the preserve of modern humans. It seems that simple stone blades make adequate arrowheads, so they might have been used in lightweight projectile weapons as far back as 100,000 years ago, when the blades first appeared. Spears and arrows would have let early hunters catch small fast-moving creatures rather than tackling large dangerous animals with hand-held blades. Researchers from Stony Brook University in New York have shown that so-called Levallois points make effective arrowheads. They turned 51 reproduction blades into arrows and successfully shot them into an animal carcass. The earliest definite arrowheads date to around 20,000 years ago and are the handiwork of modern humans.
New Scientist / Journal of Archaeological Science Jun 18, 2009	back to top