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Last year it was revealed that Pentagon scientists working in a secretive united created a microchip to be inserted underneath the skin, that can detect Covid-19 before the body exhibits symptoms. 60 Minutes interviewed retired Colonel Matt Hepburn, an army infectious disease physician, who spent years with the secretive defense advanced research projects agency or DARPA, working on technology he hopes will ensure COVID-19 is the last pandemic. "Dr. Hepburn showed us a few current projects, some sound like they’re from an episode of “Star Trek.” Consider a ship like the USS Theodore Roosevelt — hobbled last year when 1,271...

Breakthrough approach to rapid detection of Candida species directly from whole blood with T2 Magnetic resonance demonstrated in first patient samples Lexington, MA, April 24, 2013 (Embargoed until 2:00 PM US Eastern Time) – T2 Biosystems, a company developing direct detection products enabling superior diagnostics, today announced the publication of research supporting the Company's flagship diagnostic test, T2Candida®, in Science Translational Medicine. The research highlights T2Candida as a breakthrough approach to rapid and sensitive identification of species-specific Candida, a sepsis-causing fungus, directly from whole blood in approximately three hours, or up to 25 times faster than the current gold standard...

Enlarge Image Bypassing the guard. To avoid destruction by a wary immune system, nanoparticles must get past macrophages like the one shown here. Credit: Hemera/Thinkstock It's a popular goal in nanotechnology these days: using tiny particles as containers to ferry drugs to tumors, among other targets. But immune sentries called macrophages quickly spot foreign invaders and gobble them up. Now, a team of Pennsylvania researchers has found a way to give particles a molecular "passport" that gets them past the sentries in mice, where the particles then deliver their lethal cargo to tumors and help destroy them. That success...

Some scientists question the existence of self-assembling stripes on nanoparticles © NPGA prickly controversy has erupted in the rarefied world of nanoscience revolving around the strength of the evidence that molecules can assemble themselves into discrete stripes around gold nanoparticles. The issue highlights the difficulty of interpreting images of nanoscale objects.For many years researchers have been decorating gold nanoparticles with thiolated ligands to imbue the nanoparticles with a range of properties. In 2004, a group led by Francesco Stellacci, then at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the US, published a paper in Nature Materials demonstrating that if two different...

New nanotechnology can be used for Type 1 diabetes, food allergies and asthma New nanoparticle tricks and resets immune system in mice with MSFirst MS approach that doesn't suppress immune systemClinical trial for MS patients shows why nanoparticle is best optionNanoparticle now being tested in Type 1 diabetes and asthma CHICAGO --- In a breakthrough for nanotechnology and multiple sclerosis, a biodegradable nanoparticle turns out to be the perfect vehicle to stealthily deliver an antigen that tricks the immune system into stopping its attack on myelin and halt a model of relapsing remitting multiple sclerosis (MS) in mice, according...

If you're watching the complex processes in a living cell, it is easy to miss something important—especially if you are watching changes that take a long time to unfold and require high-spatial-resolution imaging. But new research* makes it possible to scrutinize activities that occur over hours or even days inside cells, potentially solving many of the mysteries associated with molecular-scale events occurring in these tiny living things. A joint research team, working at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), has discovered a method of using nanoparticles to illuminate...

Enlarge ImageStoking Fears. A new study has raised fresh concerns about nanoparticles, but they may be unfounded. Credit: Nandiyanto/Wikimedia The headlines are laced with fear. "Nanoparticles 'can damage DNA.'" "Nanoparticle Safety Looking More Complicated." "Nanoparticles Indirect Threat to DNA." All seem to suggest that a new study, released yesterday, has found that nanoscale materials, used in everything from medical imaging to cancer treatment, can damage genetic material in our bodies, feeding public fears. But this particular study has little relevance to human exposure risks, experts say, and it is deeply flawed in other ways. "I think it's a meaningless...

US and French scientists say the term 'nanoparticle' needs to be redefined to provide a focus for environmental, health and safety studies, and future regulation. According to the researchers, nanomaterials should be categorised based on novel properties that are related to their small size - not, crucially, their size alone.In most countries, few or no specific regulations exist to govern the safe use of nanoparticles, despite their wide use in cosmetics, sun screens and some drug products. Until a decision can be reached on what exactly constitutes a nanoparticle, however, there can be no clear path forward. Although traditionally thought...

Chemists at Rice University have discovered how to assemble gold and silver nanoparticle building blocks into larger structures based on a novel method that harkens back to one of nature's oldest known chemical innovations -- the self-assembly of lipid membranes that surround every living cell. The research appears in the Nov. 29 issue of the Journal of the American Chemical Society (JACS 2006, 128, 15098). Researchers believe the new method will allow them to create a wide variety of useful materials, including extra-potent cancer drugs and more efficient catalysts for the chemical industry.The method makes use of the hydrophobic effect,...

Bioterrorism has been in the minds of millions of Americans ever since the 'anthrax letters' were sent just after 9/11. Unlike conventional terrorism, where a bomb blast is a clear sign that something has happened, biowarfare methods such as spraying viruses into the air or polluting water sources are silent and often leave no visible trace. How do we know if something has happened, and, more importantly, what do we do about it? Israeli scientists are coming up with answers from several different angles.