3-D printed guide helps regrow complex nerves after injury

University of Minnesota. Scientists have developed a first-of-its-kind, 3-D printed guide that helps regrow both the sensory and motor functions of complex nerves after injury. The groundbreaking research has the potential to help more than 200,000 people annually who experience nerve injuries or disease.

This is a 3-D printed nerve regeneration pathway implanted in a rat helped to improve walking in 10 to 12 weeks after implantation. Credit: University of Minnesota College of Science and Engineering

A national team of researchers has developed a first-of-its-kind, 3D-printed guide that helps regrow both the sensory and motor functions of complex nerves after injury. The groundbreaking research has the potential to help more than 200,000 people annually who experience nerve injuries or disease.

Collaborators on the project are from the University of Minnesota, Virginia Tech, University of Maryland, Princeton University, and Johns Hopkins University.

Nerve regeneration is a complex process. Because of this complexity, regrowth of nerves after injury or disease is very rare, according to the Mayo Clinic. Nerve damage is often permanent. Advanced 3D printing methods may now be the solution.

In a new study, published today in the journal Advanced Functional Materials, researchers used a combination of 3D imaging and 3D printing techniques to create a custom silicone guide implanted with biochemical cues to help nerve regeneration. The guide's effectiveness was tested in the lab using rats.

To achieve their results, researchers used a 3D scanner to reverse engineer the structure of a rat's sciatic nerve. They then used a specialized, custom-built 3D printer to print a guide for regeneration. Incorporated into the guide were 3D-printed chemical cues to promote both motor and sensory nerve regeneration. The guide was then implanted into the rat by surgically grafting it to the cut ends of the nerve. Within about 10 to 12 weeks, the rat's ability to walk again was improved.

"This represents an important proof of concept of the 3D printing of custom nerve guides for the regeneration of complex nerve injuries," said University of Minnesota mechanical engineering professor Michael McAlpine, the study's lead researcher. "Someday we hope that we could have a 3D scanner and printer right at the hospital to create custom nerve guides right on site to restore nerve function."

Scanning and printing takes about an hour, but the body needs several weeks to regrow the nerves. McAlpine said previous studies have shown regrowth of linear nerves, but this is the first time a study has shown the creation of a custom guide for regrowth of a complex nerve like the Y-shaped sciatic nerve that has both sensory and motor branches.

"The exciting next step would be to implant these guides in humans rather than rats," McAlpine said. In cases where a nerve is unavailable for scanning, McAlpine said there could someday be a "library" of scanned nerves from other people or cadavers that hospitals could use to create closely matched 3D-printed guides for patients.

In addition to McAlpine, major contributors to the research team include Blake N. Johnson, Virginia Tech; Xiaofeng Jia, University of Maryland and Johns Hopkins University; and Karen Z. Lancaster, Esteban Engel, and Lynn W. Enquist, Princeton University.

This research was funded by grants from the National Institutes of Health, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Maryland Stem Cell Research Fund, and the Grand Challenges Program at Princeton University.

To read more about the study entitled "3D Printed Anatomical Nerve Regeneration Pathways," visit the Advanced Functional Materials website.

Story Source:

The above post is reprinted from materials provided by University of Minnesota. 

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

Journal Reference:

Blake N. Johnson, Karen Z. Lancaster, Gehua Zhen, Junyun He, Maneesh K. Gupta, Yong Lin Kong, Esteban A. Engel, Kellin D. Krick, Alex Ju, Fanben Meng, Lynn W. Enquist, Xiaofeng Jia, Michael C. McAlpine. 3D Printed Anatomical Nerve Regeneration Pathways. Advanced Functional Materials, 2015; 

DOI: 10.1002/adfm.201501760

ORIGINAL: ScienceDaily

September 18, 2015

Study: industrial civilisation headed for 'irreversible collapse'? (Updated)

NOTE: NASA Clarifies Its Role in Civilization-Collapse Study
NASA is distancing itself from a new study that investigates how unsustainable resource exploitation and rising income inequality could potentially lead to the collapse of human civilization as we know it.
NASA officials released this statement on the study today (March 20): "A soon-to-be published research paper, 'Human and Nature Dynamics (HANDY): Modeling Inequality and Use of Resources in the Collapse or Sustainability of Societies' by University of Maryland researchers Safa Motesharrei and Eugenia Kalnay, and University of Minnesota's Jorge Rivas, was not solicited, directed or reviewed by NASA. It is an independent study by the university researchers utilizing research tools developed for a separate NASA activity. As is the case with all independent research, the views and conclusions in the paper are those of the authors alone. NASA does not endorse the paper or its conclusions."

Natural and social scientists develop new model of how 'perfect storm' of crises could unravel global system

This Nasa Earth Observatory image shows a storm system circling around an area of extreme low pressure in 2010, which many scientists attribute to climate change. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images

A new study sponsored by Nasa's Goddard Space Flight Center has highlighted the prospect that global industrial civilisation could collapse in coming decades due to unsustainable resource exploitation and increasingly unequal wealth distribution.

Noting that warnings of 'collapse' are often seen to be fringe or controversial, the study attempts to make sense of compelling historical data showing that "the process of rise-and-collapse is actually a recurrent cycle found throughout history." Cases of severe civilisational disruption due to "precipitous collapse - often lasting centuries - have been quite common."

The research project is based on a new cross-disciplinary 'Human And Nature DYnamical' (HANDY) model, led by applied mathematician Safa Motesharrei of the US National Science Foundation-supported National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center, in association with a team of natural and social scientists. The study based on the HANDY model has been accepted for publication in the peer-reviewed Elsevier journal, Ecological Economics.

It finds that according to the historical record even advanced, complex civilisations are susceptible to collapse, raising questions about the sustainability of modern civilisation:

"The fall of the Roman Empire, and the equally (if not more) advanced Han, Mauryan, and Gupta Empires, as well as so many advanced Mesopotamian Empires, are all testimony to the fact that advanced, sophisticated, complex, and creative civilizations can be both fragile and impermanent."

By investigating the human-nature dynamics of these past cases of collapse, the project identifies the most salient interrelated factors which explain civilisational decline, and which may help determine the risk of collapse today: namely,  

• Population, 
• Climate, 
• Water, 
• Agriculture, and  
• Energy.

These factors can lead to collapse when they converge to generate two crucial social features:

• "the stretching of resources due to the strain placed on the ecological carrying capacity"; and 
• "the economic stratification of society into Elites [rich] and Masses (or "Commoners") [poor]" 

These social phenomena have played "a central role in the character or in the process of the collapse," in all such cases over "the last five thousand years."

Currently, high levels of economic stratification are linked directly to overconsumption of resources, with "Elites" based largely in industrialised countries responsible for both:

"... accumulated surplus is not evenly distributed throughout society, but rather has been controlled by an elite. The mass of the population, while producing the wealth, is only allocated a small portion of it by elites, usually at or just above subsistence levels."

The study challenges those who argue that technology will resolve these challenges by increasing efficiency:

"Technological change can raise the efficiency of resource use, but it also tends to raise both per capita resource consumption and the scale of resource extraction, so that, absent policy effects, the increases in consumption often compensate for the increased efficiency of resource use."

Productivity increases in agriculture and industry over the last two centuries has come from "increased (rather than decreased) resource throughput," despite dramatic efficiency gains over the same period.

Modelling a range of different scenarios, Motesharri and his colleagues conclude that under conditions "closely reflecting the reality of the world today... we find that collapse is difficult to avoid." In the first of these scenarios, civilisation:


".... appears to be on a sustainable path for quite a long time, but even using an optimal depletion rate and starting with a very small number of Elites, the Elites eventually consume too much, resulting in a famine among Commoners that eventually causes the collapse of society. It is important to note that this Type-L collapse is due to an inequality-induced famine that causes a loss of workers, rather than a collapse of Nature."

Another scenario focuses on the role of continued resource exploitation, finding that "with a larger depletion rate, the decline of the Commoners occurs faster, while the Elites are still thriving, but eventually the Commoners collapse completely, followed by the Elites."

In both scenarios, Elite wealth monopolies mean that they are buffered from the most "detrimental effects of the environmental collapse until much later than the Commoners", allowing them to "continue 'business as usual' despite the impending catastrophe." The same mechanism, they argue, could explain how "historical collapses were allowed to occur by elites who appear to be oblivious to the catastrophic trajectory (most clearly apparent in the Roman and Mayan cases)."

Applying this lesson to our contemporary predicament, the study warns that:

"While some members of society might raise the alarm that the system is moving towards an impending collapse and therefore advocate structural changes to society in order to avoid it, Elites and their supporters, who opposed making these changes, could point to the long sustainable trajectory 'so far' in support of doing nothing."

However, the scientists point out that the worst-case scenarios are by no means inevitable, and suggest that appropriate policy and structural changes could avoid collapse, if not pave the way toward a more stable civilisation.

The two key solutions are to

• reduce economic inequality so as to ensure fairer distribution of resources, and 
• to dramatically reduce resource consumption by relying on less intensive renewable resources and reducing population growth:

"Collapse can be avoided and population can reach equilibrium if the per capita rate of depletion of nature is reduced to a sustainable level, and if resources are distributed in a reasonably equitable fashion."

The NASA-funded HANDY model offers a highly credible wake-up call to governments, corporations and business - and consumers - to recognise that 'business as usual' cannot be sustained, and that policy and structural changes are required immediately.

Although the study is largely theoretical, a number of other more empirically-focused studies - by KPMG and the UK Government Office of Science for instance - have warned that the convergence of food, water and energy crises could create a 'perfect storm' within about fifteen years. But these 'business as usual' forecasts could be very conservative.

Dr Nafeez Ahmed is executive director of the Institute for Policy Research & Development and author of A User's Guide to the Crisis of Civilisation: And How to Save It among other books. Follow him on Twitter @nafeezahmed

ORIGINAL: The Guardian

These Bacteria Eat Electricity And Make Fuel

ORIGINAL: FastCoExist

It’s not a diet we’d recommend for everyone, but these hungry bugs might be the key to a clean source of gasoline.

The reason we’re hooked on oil, and its climate warming derivatives, is the astonishing amount of energy packed into every gallon of the stuff. Gasoline burns brighter compared to alternatives from ethanol to electricity whenever it’s stored in a tank or battery. But if we could make energy-dense liquids from electrons, the energetic sub-atomic particles driving an electrical current, we could begin weaning ourselves off fossil fuels, particularly in transportation.

Mariprofundus ferrooxydans PV-1, a little bacteria from the ocean, may be the microbe for the job. It feasts on the iron atoms dissolved in seawater, which makes it attractive to scientists who want to turn it into an electric factory for making biofuels. Here’s how it works: Most life on Earth depends on the sun to drive photosynthesis. Plants use solar radiation to use and capture chemical energy, combining water and carbon dioxide to create sugars, carbohydrates, proteins, and other compounds. These are in turn eaten by other organisms higher up the food chain. A few rare classes of organisms actually feed directly on the energy in chemical bonds of the Earth’s minerals. By rearranging molecules, the microbes grab energy from the transfer of electrons among atoms. One group, known as lithoautotrophs, or "eaters of rock," reduce mineral compounds to fuel their metabolism while driving massive geological processes such as rock weathering in the process.

Organisms may one day turn an electrical current into a rich source of organic compounds for biofuels.

M. ferrooxydans is one of them. Iron is its main course, and primary source of electrons. So researchers at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, publishing in the open-source journal mBio, isolated the bacteria and trained them to "eat" electrons in an electric current flowing from a cathode. Despite the lack of iron atoms, the bacteria thrived, growing as a biofilm on the electrode. The results, say the researchers, suggest similar organisms may one day turn an electrical current into a rich source of organic compounds for biofuels. This study, and a handful of others like it, at least show it’s possible to shoot electrons into a bacteria’s metabolism and produce organic compounds as well.

But there’s a long way to go. The next step (PDF) is to harness renewable, carbon-free electricity that serves as a food supply for electron-eating bacteria to churn out biofuels. Research to achieve that vision is only just beginning.

inShare

next step (PDF) is to harness renewable, carbon-free electricity that serves as a food supply for electron-eating bacteria to churn out biofuels. Research to achieve that vision is only just beginning.

MICHAEL J. COREN

Michael Coren covers science, economics and the environment. He is the cofounder of the multimedia production studio + newsroom MajorPlanet Studios.

Controlled Evolution In A Test Tube Produces Artificial Enzymes

ORIGINAL: PopSci

By Clay Dillow

01.31.2013

Artificial Enzymes From Evolution This visual explainer should clarify the process. University of Minnesota / Peggy Rinard

Researchers at the University of Minnesota have just created an artificial enzyme in a test tube by following the rules of natural selection.

This artificial enzyme likely resembles what enzymes looked like billions of years ago, when life began evolving.

Enzymes created in laboratories typically follow principles of rational enzyme design, in which researchers develop a preconceived idea of what an enzyme should be, model it on a computer, and then influence its development to produce the molecule that they want.

By contrast, this new enzyme, developed by Burckhard Seelig’s lab at UM’s College of Biological Sciences, was developed in the same way enzymes evolve in nature. A large quantity of candidate proteins were placed together in culture and screened with every successive generation for their ability to perform a desired function (in this case, joining two pieces of RNA together). Unlike rational enzyme design, this approach isn’t limited by what the researchers know about enzyme structure. All the researchers really need to know is what they want from the enzyme. Evolution finds the best way to get there.

Enzymes are manipulated for use in all kinds of things, from manufacturing processes to fuel refinement to the development of new food products. Industry uses both natural and artificial enzymes for specific purposes, as they catalyze the chemical reactions that generate desired processes and products. Now, the ability to generate enzymes by evolutionary means could lead to whole new applications for tailored enzymes that aren’t achievable with rational enzyme design.

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[PhysOrg]

Big Question: What is nature worth?

ORIGINAL: Environment Institute University of Minnesota

CUANDO IGNORAMOS EL VALOR DE LA NATURALEZA, LA NATURALEZA PIERDE Y NOSOTROS TAMBIÉN

TEDxTC - Jonathan Foley - The Other Inconvenient Truth

ORIGINAL: TED

Planteamiento del problema presentado por la agricultura actual:

La agricultura ocupa:

• 40% de la superficie de la tierra, 16'000.000kms² equivalentes al tamaño de América del Sur. 30'000.000kms² en pastos. 
• Usamos 2.800km³ de agua al año en irrigar cosechas o 400m³ por c/u de los 7.000 millones de habitantes de la tierra. (1km³ equivale a 1000 millones de m³⁾
• el 70% del consumo de agua y 
• es responsable por un 30% de las emisiones de gases de efecto invernadero (más que la producida por la generación de electricidad, la industria y los vehículos de toda clase). 
• Dobla el flujo de Nitrógeno y Fósforo por causa de los fertilizantes empleados
• Además causa una enorme pérdida de biodiversidad 

Para fines de siglo será necesario DOBLAR la producción agrícola  (somos 7 billones de personas hoy y seremos 9 billones en 2040) para suplir las necesidades alimenticias y energéticas de la población. ¿Cómo se va a lograr ésto?

No a costa de superficie terrestre sino con mayor rendimiento de los suelos utilizados.

Necesidades a considerar  en el uso de la tierra cultivable:

• Producción de pastos y cosechas
• Producción de bosques
• Preservación de hábitats y biodiversidad
• Regulación del flujo del agua
• Regulación de la calidad del aguas
• Captura de Carbono del aire
• Regulación del clima y calidad del aire regionales
• Mediación en enfermedades infecciosas

Jonathan Foley: Profesor

Jonathan Foley estudia sistemas ambientales complejos y sus efectos en la sociedad. Sus modelos computacionales han demostrado que la agricultura está teniendo profundo impacto en nuestro planeta.

¿Por qué le debe escuchar?:

El Dr. Jonathan Foley se centra en la compleja relación entre los sistemas mundiales de medio ambiente y de la civilización humana, usando modelo computacionales para analizar los cambios en el uso del suelo, los ecosistemas y los recursos de todo el mundo. Después de 15 años en la Universidad de Wisconsin, Foley es actualmente profesor y presidente McKnight de la Junta en el Departamento de Ecología y director del Instituto del Medio Ambiente de la Universidad de Minnesota.