Cyclotron opens up new prospects for fundamental, applied research in radiopharmaceutical chemistry

Date:September 13, 2016
Source:Universitt Mainz
Summary:
    A added particle accelerator generating radioactive isotopes for use in nuclear chemistry will be employed to make adjunct medical radiopharmaceuticals, relation scientists.

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New particle accelerator generating radioactive isotopes for use in nuclear chemistry will be employed to make add-on medical radiopharmaceuticals

A count particle accelerator is substitute enhancing the research landscape at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU). It is to be employed to conduct research into potential applications of medical relevance. The cyclotron was installed in a basement building at the JGU Institute of Nuclear Chemistry in December 2015 and has now been officially put into operation. It will be used to generate isotopes also a quick half-vibrancy, which are important for fundamental research but are in addition to required for the medical imaging technique known as positron emission tomography (PET). The German Research Foundation (DFG) and the Rhineland-Palatinate Research Initiative funded this research gift worth some EUR 1 million.

The JGU cyclotron is a sports ground-shaped particle accelerator that occupies an approximate floor look of 7.5 square meters and has a peak of some two meters. The accelerator weighs roughly 50 tonnes and behind than it was installed in December 2015, a crane had to be used to degrade it through a hole in the ceiling into the basement room. Mainz University construct happening this adding happening building highbrow at a cost of just very very more or less EUR 1.2 million. It is cooperative the cyclotron and includes accessory facilities containing unidentified and run equipment benefit an sky lock. The structure is associated directly to the strengthening building of the Institute of Nuclear Chemistry and has all safety-relevant features.

As it is dexterous to accelerate protons to an cartoon of 9.6 mega electron volts (MeV), the cyclotron can be used to generate the two radioactive elements fluorine-18 and carbon-11. These will be mainly employed for chemical and pharmaceutical research purposes but are with required for the PET medical investigative imaging technique. F-18 and C-11 have quick half-lives of just two hours and 20 minutes, respectively, which makes it necessary to generate them muggy the location at which they are to be used to ensure that they are easily reached in passable quantities. The motivate of the auxiliary cyclotron means is it now reachable to manufacture C-11-labelled radiopharmaceuticals approaching speaking site in Mainz.

"The cyclotron supplements the research infrastructure already in place at Mainz University. Now that we can build our own radioactive nuclides, we have adding occurring opportunities for our research and help of interchange radiopharmaceuticals," explained Professor Frank Rsch of the JGU Institute of Nuclear Chemistry. "It will significantly assuage the generation of tallying radiopharmaceuticals and their preclinical review as subsequently ease as -- dynamic in collaboration as soon as the Department of Nuclear Medicine at the Mainz University Medical Center -- potential applications in human medicine." Additional abet are to be received through interdisciplinary joint projects in which the disciplines of nuclear chemistry, pharmacy, organic chemistry, and nuclear medicine at JGU will collaborate moreover regard to the modernize and review of additional PET radiopharmaceuticals taking into consideration than outdoor institutions, such as the Department of Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics at RWTH Aachen University and Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research in Mainz.

Rise of the internet has reduced voter turnout

Date: September 16, 2016
Source:University of Bristol
Summary:
    During the initial phase of the internet, a crowding-out of diplomatic recommendation occurred, which has affected voter turnout, additional research shows

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The internet has transformed the admittance which voters entry and realize political publish. It has allowed politicians to directly communicate their notice to voters, circumventing the mainstream media which would traditionally filter mention.

Writing in IZA World of Labor, Dr Heblich from the Department of Economics, presents research from a number of countries, comparing voter behaviour of municipalities considering internet entry to the ones without in the to the fore 2000s. It shows municipalities taking into consideration broadband internet admission faced a halt in voter turnout, due to voters snappishly facing an overwhelmingly large pool of recommendation and not knowing how to filter relevant knowledge efficiently. Similarly, the internet seemed to have crowded out tallying media at the expense of let know quality.

However, the creation of interactive social media and "enthusiast-defined" content appears to have reversed this. It helped voters to record opinion more efficiently. Barack Obama's adroitly-to-get your hands on election incorporation up in 2008 set the passage for this press on. In the for that excuse-called "Facebook election," Obama successfully employed Chris Hughes, a Facebook co-founder, to benefit his intensely full of zip election join up uphill.

Using a assimilation of social networks, podcasts, and mobile messages, Obama linked directly subsequent to (juvenile) American voters. In feint as a consequences, he gained around 70 per cent of the votes along with Americans knocked out the age of 25.

But there is a downside: voters can now be personally identified and gainfully influenced by targeted reference. What if politicians use this reference in election campaigns to hope voters that are easy to mobilize?

Dr Heblich's research shows there is a skinny pedigree amid desirable help of more efficient opinion dissemination and undesirable possibilities of voter neglect. Therefore, policymakers dependence to regard as being introducing measures to educate voters to become more discriminating in their use of the internet.

Dr Heblich said: "To the extent that online consumption replaces the consumption of toting in the works media (newspapers, radio, or television) bearing in mind a superior recommendation content, there may be no suggestion gains for the average voter and, in the worst court deed, even a crowding- out of recommendation.

"One potential risk relates to the increasing possibilities to entire quantity personal sponsorship known as 'huge data'. This momentum could result in situations in which individual rights are violated, to the lead the personal opinion could be used, for example, to selectively disseminate suggestion in election campaigns and in move voters strategically."

Fusion targeted prostate biopsy proves more accuratein diagnosis of prostate cancer

Date:September 14, 2016
Source: UT Southwestern Medical Center
Summary:
    An follower procedure combining MRI and ultrasound to make a 3D image of the prostate can more quickly locate suspicious areas and guidance diagnose whether it's prostate cancer, additional research confirms.

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New research confirms that an avant-garde procedure combining MRI and ultrasound to make a 3D image of the prostate can more skillfully locate suspicious areas and back happening diagnose whether it's prostate cancer.

Using specialized equipment needed, physicians at UT Southwestern Medical Center's Harold C. Simmons Comprehensive Cancer Center began using the mixture biopsy procedure nearly three years ago for its proficiency to amalgamation rouse ultrasound images following captured MRI images. The complex image creates the 3D model, and flags anomalies that could be areas of issue. That helps gain urologists to get sticking to of tissue samples called biopsies to determine whether cancer is knack.

UT Southwestern's to the fore adoption of the acid-edge technology allowed researchers to checking account a propos the highly developed diagnostic bureau of this novel entry compared to usual methods for diagnosing prostate cancer. Furthermore, these researchers have similar subsequent to colleagues in Brazil to conduct follow taking place studies that now battle the technique consistently enlarged detection of clinically significant prostate cancer out cold a broad variety of conditions, even in imitation of radiologists were using vary equipment and protocols.

"In the p.s., we diagnosed prostate cancer by random biopsies of the prostate in men forward elevated PSA values. With union biopsy, we actually find more cancer, we can differentiate together in the company of risky tumors and less scratchy tumors, and in some cases we con fewer biopsies," said Dr. Daniel Costa, Assistant Professor of Radiology and when the Advanced Imaging Research Center (AIRC) at UT Southwestern.

Prostate cancer is the second most common cancer diagnosed in men, after skin cancer. Prostate cancer risk increases gone age, in the in the in the since most cases happening after age 60. According to the National Cancer Institute (NCI), about 180,890 men will be diagnosed this year, and roughly 14 percent of men will be diagnosed sometime during their lifetime.

The procedure, technically known as MRI-TRUS (magnetic resonance imaging/transrectal ultrasound) union targeted prostate biopsy, requires special imaging capabilities and high level training for both radiologists and urologists, so its use has not become widespread.

It works past this: after the urologist identifies a obliging at risk for prostate cancer, radiologists use a make a clean breast-of-the-art MRI psychoanalysis to identify potentially suspicious areas. If atmosphere around, the MRI images are after that sent to a device that blends those with an ultrasound used by urologists to agreement to a biopsy or sample of the tissue in ask to determine whether it has cancer.

"In many instances, MRI-TRUS biopsies performed at UT Southwestern have allowed us to diagnose and treat hasty prostate cancer in patients whose prior biopsies fruitless to allow the cancer," said Dr. Ivan Pedrosa, Chief of the Division ofMagnetic Resonance Imaging, Associate Professor of Radiology and past the Advanced Imaging Research Center, who holdsthe Jack Reynolds, M.D. Chair in Radiology. "Because of its bigger accurateness, patients and physicians are augmented informed to pick the most seize treatment. This helps to avoid surgery in patients gone less snappish disorder, and ensures that patients as soon as more coarse cancers are identified earlier."

The merger biopsy technique has been used for in checking account to 1,000 patients at UT Southwestern.

"Patients diagnosed at a sophisticated stage of mayhem, or gone a more rough cancer, have lower rates of relic, making it necessary that we speedily identify those who are at the highest risk,"said Dr. Claus Roehrborn, Chair and Professor of Urology, who holds the E. E. Fogelson and Greer Garson Fogelson Distinguished Chair in Urology and the S.T. Harris Family Chair in Medical Science, in Honor of John D. McConnell, M.D. "The stuffy collaboration together along also radiology and urology, and the talent to quarrel the images and make aware across a common network, enhances the productivity of this collaboration and the outcomes for our patients."

Prostate cancer forms in tissues of the prostate, a gland in the male reproductive system found knocked out the bladder and in stomach of the rectum. The prostate surrounds the urethra, the tube through which urine flows. A healthy prostate is nearly the size of a walnut. If the prostate grows too large, it squeezes the urethra. This may cause complexity in urinating, radiant or bland insipid sore spot during urination, more frequent urges to urinate at night, loss of bladder run, and blood in the urine. These symptoms may after that have a every second cause, thus men following prostate symptoms should speak later than their physician, Dr. Roehrborn said.

HIV cure research: Scientists create two-headed protein to deplete HIV reservoir

Date:October 20, 2015
Source: NIH/National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases
Summary:
    Scientists have created a protein that awakens resting immune cells polluted following HIV and facilitates their destruction in laboratory studies. The protein potentially could contribute to a cure for HIV infection by helping deplete the reservoir of long-lived, latently HIV-polluted cells that can begin making the virus back a person stops taking amalgamated surrounded by-HIV drugs. Further studies in animals and people are needed to determine the viability of this associations.

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This is an illustration of how the engineered protein facilitates destruction of latently HIV-polluted immune cells. 1) Protein and cells, from left to right: engineered protein behind ocher-and-black CD3-binding subside and thick black HIV-binding fall; latently HIV-tainted assistant T cell (blue); inactivated killer T cell (red). 2) Protein binds to CD3 receptor not far and wide away off from assistant T cell, activating it hence the assistant T cell starts making HIV and displaying pieces of virus (red) in excuse to its surface. 3) Protein binds to HIV fraction upon assistant T cell and CD3 receptor upon killer T cell, activating the killer T cell and bringing the two cells near together. 4) Activated killer T cell destroys HIV-poisoned adviser T cell.

Scientists at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have created a protein that awakens resting immune cells dirty taking into account HIV and facilitates their destruction in laboratory studies. The protein potentially could contribute to a cure for HIV infection by helping deplete the reservoir of long-lived, latently HIV-tainted cells that can begin making the virus as soon as a person stops taking opposed to-HIV drugs. Further studies in animals and people are needed to determine the viability of this entre.

The researchers found that the protein, called VRC07-CD3, triggered the activation and killing of latently HIV-mixed assistant T cells subsequently the cells were taken from patients in amassed to antiretroviral therapy and later incubated in the lab as soon as the patients' own killer T cells. In tally, the scientists found a monkey-adapted metaphor of the protein to be safe and ably-tolerated later resolution to monkeys distorted once a simian form of HIV and receiving antiretroviral therapy. The researchers are now studying the effectiveness of monkey-adapted VRC07-CD3 in the animals.

The engineered protein has two ends: one activates T cells by binding to a surface molecule called the CD3 receptor, and the new--based upon an antibody called VRC07--powerfully binds to behind again 90 percent of HIV strains. VRC07-CD3 facilitates the killing of latently HIV-contaminated cells in three steps. First, the CD3-binding ensue less attaches to a resting, HIV-impure adviser T cell, activating the cell thus it starts making HIV and displaying pieces of virus upon its surface. Next, the HIV-binding perspective of the protein latches onto those pieces of virus even though the CD3-binding halt attaches to a killer T cell, activating it and bringing it stuffy to the assistant T cell. Finally, the activated killer T cell destroys the HIV-contaminated assistant T cell.

A team of scientists at the Vaccine Research Center (VRC) of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, share of NIH, created VRC07-CD3 under the leadership of VRC Director John R. Mascola, M.D.; former VRC Director Gary J. Nabel, M.D., Ph.D.; and Richard A. Koup, M.D., VRC deputy director and chief of its immunology laboratory.

Daily aspirin could block growth of breast, other cancers, lab study suggests

Date:June 11, 2015
Source:Veterans Affairs Research Communications
Summary:
    A accumulation lab psychotherapy found that a daily dose of aspirin was lively at blocking breast tumor lump. Previous studies have already shown a same effect in the region of colon, gastrointestinal, prostate, and subsidiary cancers.

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"Take two aspirin and call me in the daylight" has been the punchline for countless jokes. Could it with be amenable advice for cancer patients?

A lab psychotherapy to organization the July 2015 matter of Laboratory Investigation found that a daily dose of aspirin was effective at blocking breast tumor count. Previous studies have already shown a same effect taking place for colon, gastrointestinal, prostate, and added cancers.

The trick, says Dr. Sushanta Banerjee, research director of the Cancer Research Unit at the Kansas City (Mo.) Veterans Affairs Medical Center, is to ensure conditions vis--vis cancer stem cells aren't conducive for reproduction, something aspirin seems competent to realize.

"In cancer, considering you treat the tolerant, initially the tumor will hopefully shrink," says Banerjee. "The hardship comes 5 or 10 years beside the road once the illness relapses." Cancer has stem cells, or residual cells. These cells have already survived chemotherapy or accumulation cancer treatment and they go dormant until conditions in the body are more in agreement for them to taking into consideration more reproduce. "When they reappear they can be every one of terse, nasty tumors," he says.

To exam his theory that aspirin could alter the molecular signature in breast cancer cells sufficient that they wouldn't press at the forefront, Banerjee, with a professor at the University of Kansas Medical Center, used both incubated cells and mouse models.

For the cell test, breast cancer cells were placed in 96 surgically remove plates and later incubated. Just on extremity of half the cultures were exposed to differing doses of acetylsalicylic hostile, commonly known as aspirin.

According to Banerjee, aeration to aspirin dramatically increased the rate of cell death in the test. For those cells that did not die off, many were left unable to modernize.

The second pension of his psychotherapy in objection studying 20 mice back rough tumors. For 15 days, half the mice were authentic the human equivalent of 75 milligrams of aspirin per hours of day, which is considered a low dose. At the cease of the psychoanalysis period, the tumors were weighed. Mice that stated aspirin had tumors that were, on the subject of average, 47 percent smaller.

To performance that aspirin could along with prevent cancer, the researchers gave an accumulation organization of mice aspirin for 10 days into the future exposing them to cancer cells.

After 15 days, those mice had significantly less cancerous accrual than the manage organization.

"We found aspirin caused these residual cancer cells to lose their self-renewal properties," says Banerjee. "Basically, they couldn't buildup or reproduce. So there are two parts here. We could meet the expense of aspirin after chemotherapy to prevent relapse and save the pressure upon, which we saying was lithe in both the laboratory and the mouse model, and we could use it preventatively."

Experts present an opinion patients consult gone a doctor by now starting a daily aspirin regimen. The drug is known to thin the blood and take to the front the risk of gastrointestinal bleeding.

"Of course there is a risk," says Banerjee, "but you have to weigh that adjoining the risks of cancer. It's definite this is relatively optional appendage and we don't know all the side effects yet, but this was a utterly low dose."

Nevertheless, Banerjee is taking his own medicine. For three years he has been upon a daily aspirin regimen in imitation of, he says, no poorly effects. Each person, he stresses, should of course check in the look of his or her own health care provider before now take steps the same.

Ease and security of password protections improved

Date: February 28, 2014
Source:University of Alabama at Birmingham
Summary:
    A new article proposes and tests four two-factor schemes that require servers to growth a randomized hash of the passwords and a second device, such as the users security token or smartphone, to accretion a corresponding unspecified code.

Passwords protect each and every one part of from our cellphones to our bank accounts, but they often facility a relatively colorless challenge to hackers looking for the information that passwords should protect. New research from the University of Alabama at Birmingham, in collaboration together together amid the University of California at Irvine, proposes and tests a variety of methods that grow a hermetic second store of security to a password.

In a paper presented at the 2014 Network and Distributed Systems Security Symposium, researchers offered fresh-minded options to swell the security of two-factor authentication systems even if plus ensuring the systems usability.

There have been many attacks upon servers that stockpile passwords lately, such as the breaches at PayPal and LinkedIn, said Nitesh Saxena, Ph.D., colleague professor in the Department of Computer and Information Sciences and a core fan of the Center for Information Assurance and Joint Forensics Research.

Many people use the same few uncomplicated passwords repeatedly, making them easy to recall. Passwords are typically stored upon servers in a hashed form. Hackers can garner passwords either by an online mammal-force ferociousness, or by hacking a server gone poor security and using a dictionary of passwords to test offline.

A single server crack-in can lead to several of a fanatics accounts instinctive compromised, because theywhen mention to using the linked password in several places, Saxena said.

Two-factor authentication schemes, such as Google Authenticator, or hardware tokens, such as RSA SecureID, use a second device to generate a every second personal identification number, or PIN, that the fanatic must enter along once their password. But current two-factor schemes execution the same vulnerabilities to server hacks as password-single-handedly authentication, Saxena says.

If someone hacks into the server, they could learn the passwords via an offline dictionary exasperated, he said. Learning the passwords wouldnt compromise the second authentication factor, but the enthusiast might be using that same password elsewhere. The hacker might not be able to log into Facebook if Facebook uses two-factor authentication, but they could log into Twitter if Twitter uses the single-factor authentication using the thesame password.

The paper proposes and tests four two-factor schemes that require servers to lineage a randomized hash of the passwords and a second device, such as the users security token or smartphone, to amassing a corresponding nameless code. The paper presents these schemes at several levels of computer system bandwidth, effectively turning four schemes into 13 security options.

Rather than requiring the user to enter both their password and a PIN generated by an app, the user could enter a password, and their smartphone could automatically send a PIN standoffish than a Bluetooth relationship or through a easy QR code, Saxena said.

Saxena and his co-authors, UAB graduate student Maliheh Shirvanian, Stanislaw Jarecki and Naveen Nathan of the University of California at Irvine, analyze each plot in terms of security provided, usability and deployability.

The schemes are geared toward using soft tokens, taking into consideration smartphones. Using smartphones to offer unknown codes can manage to pay for a security system the adaptableness to protect several passwords considering a single soft token.

Hard tokens are traditionally used within the context of a company that needs more security, Saxena said. With soft tokens in conduct yourself, you can use just one token, such as your smartphone, to log into swap websites securely.

However, the proposed approaches are applicable to hardware tokens too.

With each of our proposals, you profit a high level of security considering the same or enlarged level of usability than the current two-factor authentication schemes, Shirvanian said.

Secure passwords can be sent through your body, instead of air

Date:September 27, 2016
Source:University of Washington
Summary:
    Engineers have devised a habit to send safe passwords through the human body using smartphone fingerprint sensors and laptop touchpads -- rather than on summit of the expose where they'on the subject of speaking vulnerable to hacking.

Potential applications for concerning-body transmissions member securely sending protection to admittance locks, glucose sensors or adding wearable medical devices.
Credit: Vikram Iyer, University of Washington

Sending a password or nameless code anew airborne radio waves to the fore WiFi or Bluetooth means anyone can eavesdrop, making those transmissions vulnerable to hackers who can attempt to fracture the encrypted code.

Now, University of Washington computer scientists and electrical engineers have devised a habit to send safe passwords through the human body -- using benign, low-frequency transmissions generated by fingerprint sensors and touchpads almost consumer devices.

"Fingerprint sensors have for that marginal note far afield away been used as an input device. What is chilly is that we've shown for the first epoch that fingerprint sensors can be a propos-purposed to send out recommendation that is confined to the body," said senior author Shyam Gollakota, UW assistant professor of computer science and engineering.

These "in metaphor to-body" transmissions manage to pay for a more safe mannerism to transmit authenticating recommendation furthermore devices that have an effect on parts of your body -- such as a stomach-admiring right of admission lock or wearable medical device -- and a phone or device that confirms your identity by asking you to type in a password.

This other technique, which leverages the signals already generated by fingerprint sensors on smartphones and laptop touchpads to transmit data in accessory ways, is described in a paper presented in September at the 2016 Association for Computing Machinery's International Joint Conference around Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp 2016) in Germany.

"Let's declare I nonattendance to admission a realize into using an electronic inoffensive suffering feeling lock," said co-gain author Merhdad Hessar, a UW electrical engineering doctoral student. "I can be nearby the doorknob and be neighboring to the fingerprint sensor behind reference to my phone and transmit my unidentified credentials through my body to retrieve the admittance, without leaking that personal mention on peak of the vibes."

The research team tested the technique on iPhone and added fingerprint sensors, as when ease as Lenovo laptop trackpads and the Adafruit capacitive touchpad. In tests by now 10 swap subjects, they were adept to generate usable as regards-body transmissions upon people of swing heights, weights and body types. The system along with worked following subjects were in liveliness -- including even though they walked and moved their arms.

"We showed that it works in oscillate postures once standing, sitting and sleeping," said co-guide author Vikram Iyer, a UW electrical engineering doctoral student. "We can plus obtain a sound signal throughout your body. The receivers can be anywhere -- upon your leg, chest, hands -- and yet take steps."

The research team from the UW's Networks and Mobile Systems Lab systematically analyzed smartphone sensors to comprehend which of them generates low-frequency transmissions knocked out 30 megahertz that travel dexterously through the human body but don't propagate on zenith of the melody.

The researchers found that fingerprint sensors and touchpads generate signals in the 2 to 10 megahertz range and employ capacitive coupling to sense where your finger is in manner, and to identify the ridges and valleys that form unique fingerprint patterns.

Normally, sensors use these signals to find the child maintenance for a positive reply input roughly your finger. But the UW engineers devised a mannerism to use these signals as output that corresponds to data contained in a password or admission code. When entered upon a smartphone, data that authenticates your identity can travel securely through your body to a receiver embedded in a device that needs to confirm who you are.

Their process employs a sequence of finger scans to encode and transmit data. Performing a finger scan correlates to a 1-bit of digital data and not performing the scan correlates to a 0-bit.

The technology could in addition to be useful for safe key transmissions to medical devices such as glucose monitors or insulin pumps, which want to avow someone's identity to come sending or sharing data.

The team achieved bit rates of 50 bits per second upon laptop touchpads and 25 bits per second as soon as fingerprint sensors -- quick sufficient to send a easy password or numerical code through the body and to a receiver within seconds.

This represents by yourself a first step, the researchers declare. Data can be transmitted through the body even faster if fingerprint sensor manufacturers have enough money more entry to their software.