The Man Who Wears His Heart On His Back !!

A Modern-Day Miracle: The Man Who Wears his Heart on his Back (packed safely in a rucksack) !


When Matthew Green leaves hospital, the one thing he really mustn’t forget is his rucksack.
The father of one will be carrying part of his new heart in it. Mr Green, 40, will be the first Briton to be discharged from hospital with a completely artificial heart.

The device in his chest is slightly larger than the organ it replaces and weighs less than six ounces. It delivers blood to the body with the help of a pump that is carried in the rucksack, along with a battery.

Around 900 of the ‘bridge-to-transplant’ devices have been fitted around the world, although Mr Green is the first to receive one in the UK. He had been in a critical condition after developing a chronic heart condition and no suitable donors could be found. With his health deteriorating fast, doctors at Papworth Hospital in Cambridgeshire decided to fit him with the device in a £100,000 operation.

Some parts of the Total Artificial Heart have a 50-year working life, although patients are generally expected to use it for around three years – during which it will ‘beat’ more than 200million times. It is hoped the device will last until a real donor heart is found for Mr Green. The patient said he felt ‘fantastic’ yesterday as he spoke about the new lease of life he has been given.



Revolutionary: The Syncardia total artificial heart has been implanted in more than 900 patients around the world
HEART OF THE MATTER
A total artificial replacement for the human heart has been one of the holy grails of modern medicine. Dr Denton Cooley implanted the first experimental device in Haskell Carp at St Luke's Hospital in Houston in 1969. The patient died three days later.

Following animal testing in the 1970s, the next operation took place in 1982 when the Jarvik 7artificial heart was transplanted into a dentist called Barney Clark. 198 operations followed.
By 2001 the first completely self-contained total artificial heart was implanted in Robert Tools at the Jewish Hospital in Louisville.

And in 2008, Charles Okeke was implanted with the SynCardia Total Artificial Heart, becoming the the first patient to leave hospital with an artificial heart in May 2010.
Since then the SynCardia Total Artificial Heart has been used in more than 900 implants in 65 hospitals. Papworth is the 66th hospital in the world and the first in the UK to be allowed to use the SynCardia artificial heart.


‘I felt so ill before, so now to be feeling so well and full of life is great. I feel very lucky,’ he said. ‘I’m still recovering from my operation so not all of the bones in my chest have healed yet. I struggle to carry it (the rucksack containing the pump and batteries) but I can walk around fine. I needed a trolley to start with.’ He added: ‘It feels very different – before the operation my heart beat was very weak and I could hardly feel my pulse. Now it’s a very strong heart beat.

‘Two years ago I was cycling nine miles to work and nine miles back every day but by the time I was admitted to hospital I was struggling to walk even a few yards. I am really excited about going home and just being able to do the everyday things that I haven’t been able to do for such a long time - such as playing in the garden with my son and cooking a meal for my family.’ Mr Green, a pharmaceutical consultant who lives with wife Gill and their five-year-old son Dylan in London, was diagnosed with Arrhythmogenic Right Ventricular Cardiomyopathy, a disease of the heart muscle that can cause arrhythmia, heart failure, and sudden death.

The exact cause of the condition – the second most common reason for sudden death in the young – is unknown, although it appears to be passed on genetically. With time running out as both chambers of his heart failed, a transplant team led by cardiothoracic surgeon Steven Tsui went to Paris for training.

They were assisted during the six-hour operation on June 9 by Dr Latif Arusoglu, an expert Total Artificial Heart surgeon from Germany, and seven weeks on Mr Green is ready to return home.Another patient received a totally artificial heart at the same hospital back in 1986 but the Jarvik-7 device was removed after two days when a donor was found. It is unlikely the patient could have been discharged anyway because of the bulkiness of the equipment needed at the time. Mr Tsui said: ‘The beauty of this device is the simplicity of the components which make it so durable.



 

Heading home: Mr Green will be able to leave hospital with his family as the heart is powered by a device that is carried in a bag

‘If there’s a problem we can easily switch to a back-up console. Primarily heart transplant is still the best, if available, and if there is sufficient time to find a suitable donor heart. ‘Matthew’s condition was deteriorating rapidly and we discussed with him the possibility of receiving this device, because without it he may not have survived the wait for a suitable donor heart.

‘The operation went extremely well and Matthew has made an excellent recovery. I expect him to go home very soon, being able to do a lot more than before the operation, until we can find a suitable donor heart.’ The device, which costs £20,000 a year to maintain, was developed by U.S. firm SynCardia Systems, which is based in Arizona.

The moment of alarm Matthew Green was extolling the virtues of his artificial heart when an alarm went off.
The whine cut through the hubbub of the press conference at Papworth Hospital, after only 90 seconds.



 

Scary moment: Matthew Green was shocked when his heart machine started to emit a high-pitched squeal during a press conference
Panic flashed on Mr Green’s face before he said: ‘That’s just me getting a bit nervous. If I get a little stressed it doesn’t like it.’

Medics stepped in (above) and prescribed a few minutes of calm until Mr Green’s blood pressure returned to normal. The device monitors tiny changes in pressure but can also be triggered by activities such as sneezing or laughing.

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Turning DNA into a hard drive

Turning DNA into a hard drive 

Stanford's Drew Endy and his lab figured out a way to turn DNA into a rewriteable data storage device that can operate within a cell.




Stanford engineers have designed rewritable memory modules made out of DNA. Here, E. coli bacteria glow different colors depending on what information is stored in their memory modules. (Norbert von der Groeben, Stanford School of Engineering / May 10, 2012)


Silicon-based computers are fine for typing term papers and surfing the Web, but scientists want to make devices that can work on a far smaller scale, recording data within individual cells. One way to do that is to create a microscopic hard drive out of DNA, the molecule that already stores the genetic blueprints of all living things.

Stanford University bioengineer Drew Endy is a pioneer in the field of synthetic biology, which aims to turn the basic building blocks of nature into tools for designing living machines. This week, members of his lab reported in Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences that they had figured out a way to turn DNA into a rewriteable data storage device that can operate within a cell. He spoke with The Times about the research.

What is synthetic biology?

Synthetic biology is basically a celebration of an engineer's inclination to want to make things using biology. Humans often learn by taking things apart. But an equally powerful way to learn is putting things back together. In synthetic biology, we can begin to put natural biological systems back together at the molecular level to test the understanding of genetics and biology we've accrued over the last 70 years.

So you want to build things using biology — including, in this case, a way to use DNA to store data?

Yes. We wanted to scope out an area where there are grand challenges in bioengineering, and genetically encoded data storage — meaning storing information inside living organisms — fit the bill.

Why would this be useful?

Say I wanted to put a genetically encoded counter to record cell divisions within every cell of my liver. A USB memory stick simply isn't going to fit in there. And even if I could miniaturize such a device with a future silicon-based manufacturing platform, it would be incredibly difficult to connect up to the biochemistry I'm going to want to record information about.

How does your data storage system work?

We engineered a little sequence of DNA and inserted it onto a chromosome in anE. colibacterium. Then we targeted this DNA with enzymes. Under one set of conditions, one of the enzymes cuts the DNA out from the genome, turns it and reinserts it back into the DNA. It would be as if you took a word in a sentence of text, flipped it upside down and backwards, and pasted it back into the sentence. It would look kind of funny.

Under a different set of conditions, a different set of enzymes finds that backwards DNA, cuts it out, flips it back to the normal orientation and glues the chromosome back together.

We encode a binary digit, or bit, within the DNA by mapping a "0" onto the normal orientation of the DNA and a "1" onto the flipped orientation of the DNA. DNA can only exist in one of two orientations, so it gives us a very nice way to store binary digits.

The key development here was that you were able to flip your DNA switch back and forth, right?

Yes, that hadn't been done before. We thought it would be pretty easy, but it took us three years.

The enzyme that flips from state 0 to state 1 is called the integrase. The enzymes that flip it back are integrase and a controlling protein that modifies its behavior called excisionase. Balancing just the right amounts of the two enzymes in the cells took us 750 attempts.

How might people use a technology like this?

I don't know. What we're working on are ideas to turn into tools that would make it possible to design, build and test things faster, more times or more smartly.

By analogy, the way we got from a room filled by one computer in 1952 to the "cloud" as it exists today was because of investments in tools. We got a lot better at silicon wafer manufacturing. We automated computer design so that human beings didn't have to do it manually. Somebody invested in some programming languages along the way. C++ didn't get discovered under a rock and Java wasn't grown on a tree. You have to work on tools.

But certainly there are ideas for end uses out there.

Sure. My dreams for synthetic biology would include using tools we build to reinvent manufacturing, so that everything now sourced from fossil fuels could be manufactured on a sustainable basis. We could have a much richer partnership with nature. That's quite a big task.

People could use DNA data storage to control processes in sewage treatment plants. If there's a storm and a whole bunch of weird, oil-based runoff from the streets comes into the sewage treatment plant, the system could adapt automatically to better process those oils. You could use biobits in medicine, too. For example, if you wanted to target a tumor inside the body, you might need an engineered immune cell to replicate within the patient — but you wouldn't want it to replicate too many times, otherwise you'd trigger an autoimmune response.

I'm certain I don't know all the applications.

What's next for your data storage module?

We're trying to scale this up. We want to get from one bit to a byte, which is eight bits. These systems don't need to be very big. If I had eight bits I could count up to 256, and I could start to study the development of an organism from a fertilized egg to a differentiated adult.

Another new dimension in the research is demonstrating that it will be possible to make this work in many organisms. We will support others who are working on that.

What we're likely to end up with will not look like classical electronics. Biology is beginning to teach us how to be a little bit more sophisticated in our engineering designs, which is a lot of fun.

 

 

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Google Chrome beats Internet Explorer in browser war

Google Chrome beats Internet Explorer in browser war 

 

 

 

LONDON: Google Chrome has now overtaken Internet Explorer to become the world's most widely used web browser.

Google Chrome briefly became the world's most popular web browser for one weekend in March, but according to figures from Statcounter it has now overtaken Microsoft's Internet Explorer for the foreseeable future.

On desktops, Chrome and IE have been on around 33 per cent each, but the last week shows Chrome taking the lead, media report said.

Speaking in March, Aodhan Cullen, StatCounter's chief executive, said 'at weekends, when people are free to choose what browser to use, many of them are selecting Chrome in preference to IE.'

On March 18, Chrome was used for 32.7 per cent of all browsing, while Internet Explorer had 32.5 per cent share, according to the report.

Chrome's market share has surged from 17 per cent a year ago, while Explorer has slipped from 45 per cent a year earlier, the report said.

The Statcounter figures also suggest that Google Android's built-in browser is now the most popular programme on mobile phones. 

 

 

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The Volkswagen Aqua

The Volkswagen Aqua

The Volkswagen Aqua is a futuristic hovercraft concept created by Yuhan Zhang, a 21 year old designer from China.
Yuhan just graduated with honors from Xihua University with a degree in Industrial Design.
Currently she's in the process of selecting a Transportation Design course to further her studies.
The Volkswagen Aqua is designed to cope with the wide variety of terrain which covers China.
From the lakes, rivers and coastal waters, to the roads, wetlands and snow and ice.
The concept was shortlisted in the CDN Car Design Awards China, based on the brief entitled simply; "Chinese off-road vehicle" by Volkswagen.
Like most hovercraft, the Volkswagen Aqua uses more than one engine.
The primary motor, which is powered by a hydrogen fuel cell, is used to drive the main fan which inflates the skirt around the vehicle and raises the Aqua just above the ground.
The fans at the rear of the vehicle are powered by individual electric motors to provide forward thrust and directional control.
The styling of the Volkswagen Aqua is extremely clean and simple.
There's very little clutter to the lines, except perhaps at the rear due to the quartet of fans.
The interior has room for two people, and features a similar minimalist vibe as the exterior.
Perhaps our only area of concern is with how you actually enter the vehicle.
See that small round hatch at the rear of the vehicle, the one located where the rear window would normally be?

That's your one and only door.

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What's on my iPhone (v.13)

 What's on my iPhone (v.13)

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