Nearly 200 Attend NEW.Mech Workshop at Brown School of Engineering

The Brown University School of Engineering hosted the 2012 New 
England Workshop on the Mechanics of Materials and Structures on November 3, 2012, at the Granoff Center with nearly 200 participants. Building on the momentum of past workshops, it was another successful installment of NewMech with participants travelling from all over New England and New York.

The one-day workshop brought together the New England Mechanics community with an interest in exploring new directions on the mechanics of materials and structures and sharing the latest advancements in the field. The event, open to the public free of cost, included four invited lectures from leading experts in the field and presented an opportunity for young scientists to highlight their research in the form of presentations, posters and movies.

One of the highlights of the workshop was the poster competition with 41 entries submitted. Each poster was judged on scientific contribution, clarity and structure, originality, and appearance. Peng Chen of Brown University won first place, while Michael Bartlett of UMass captured second place. There was a tie for third place between Alice Nasto of MIT and Ramin Oftadeh of Northeastern.

In addition, the workshop featured a new component, the “Gallery of Mechanics”. This event included movies that display research in the New England mechanics community. Ten movies were submitted and awards were presented to the top three entries. The first place winner was James Hanna of UMass. There was a tie for second place between Daniel Chen of Brandeis and Jonathan Pham of UMass. 

The workshop was possible through the generous support of The Haythornthwaite Foundation, and Brown University’s Starr Lectureship Fund, Office of the Vice President for Research and the School of Engineering, and was organized locally by Christian Franck and Shreyas Mandre, assistant professors of engineering at Brown, and by Pedro Reis (MIT), Ken Kamrin (MIT), Katia Bertoldi (Harvard), Christian Santangelo (UMass), and Ashkan Vaziri (Northeastern).

Next year’s NewMech workshop will be held at Northeastern University. For more information, please go to: http://www.brown.edu/conferences/new-england-mechanics-materials-structures/

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IMNI Celebrates its 5th Anniversary!

We invite you to join the Institute for Molecular and Nanoscale Innovation in celebrating its 5th anniversary on November 9th, 2012.

Friday, November 9th

1 pm - 4 pm
Sayles Hall

1:00 PM - 4:00 PM
Poster Session/Competition

1:40 PM - 2:15 PM
Speakers
Robert Hurt, IMNI Director
Clyde Briant, VP of Research, OVPR
President Christina Paxson

2:15 PM
Reception (Food and Beer/Wine)

3:40 PM
Announcement:  Winners for the Poster Competition

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Five Questions With: John P. Donoghue

Providence is becoming a growing national hub for neuroscience research, the home of more than 100 top brain scientists. One of the foremost scientists is John P. Donoghue, the director of the Brown Institute for Brain Science. Donoghue is also the principal investigator of BrainGate, which has won worldwide acclaim for its development of neural interfaces for people with neurological impairment and limb loss.

PBN: Why has Providence become a hub of what Dr. Edward Wing has called “an extraordinary concentration of expertise” in brain science research and treatment?

DONOGHUE: The number of brain science researchers in Providence, ranging from applied mathematicians, engineers and computer scientists to neurosurgeons and psychiatrists, as well as more traditional neuroscientists, is well over 100.

At Brown, we support and promote collaboration among this diverse community through the Brown Institute for Brain Science.

The Institute is providing state-of-the-art research facilities, including the MRI research facility open to all state researchers, in addition to substantial infrastructure funding such as the new $1 million annual fund to support new core facility equipment.

We also provide a rich environment for students to learn and experience cutting-edge science. The Norman Prince Institute for Neuroscience, founded by a $15 million grant to Lifespan in 2010, is our clinical partner.

The neuroscience institute works with the brain institute to support new innovative research and its translation to clinical application.

Last week we announced yet another important new means of support for research, the Providence VA’s $4.5 million Center of Excellence in Neurorestoration and Neurotechnology.

So, across many institutions, in a coordinated fashion, we are unifying and supporting a large community of talented researchers in fundamental and translational research as well as enhancing clinical care.

PBN: The Providence VA Medical Center just opened its new research center of excellence for neurorestoration and neurotechnology. How will this further the collaboration of scientific endeavor between Brown University and the state's hospitals?

DONOGHUE: The was created through a grant awarded by the U.S. Department of Veteran’s Affairs to be a national center of excellence located at the Providence VA Medical Center. The center is a key element of the Institute’s core mission to advance neurotechnology to restore function, including focus areas in advanced prosthetics after limb loss, cognitive disorders, paralysis, and stroke. These efforts are especially targeted at the veterans population, but with clear benefit to people everywhere.

To accomplish that mission the new center brings together researchers and clinicians from the VA, Lifespan and Care New England hospitals, and Brown. For example, in the center’s neuromodulation research focus area, psychiatrists at Butler Hospital and the VA work on technologies to electrically and magnetically stimulate brain circuits to treat mood and anxiety disorders.

The BrainGate brain-computer interface pilot trial for people with paralysis includes Rhode Island Hospital as well as Massachusetts General Hospital.

The new research center is also establishing core support that will facilitate clinical trials of new devices and will advance brain imaging capabilities across the area’s medical systems to the benefit of all.

PBN: What does the future hold for neurobionics -- replacing and restoring lost brain functions with technology?

DONOGHUE: Neurobionics, or using devices to restore or replace lost function, has a bright future. While most neurotechnologies are still in early stages, many show great promise to help those with some of the most devastating nervous system disorders. There is a need for ongoing basic science as well as translational studies to realize these advances.

The brain is incredibly complex and we still have a lot to learn not only about how individual brain cells work, but also about how networks of neurons enable the functions we know as behavior, emotion, and the mind.

On the restoration side, Drs. Cosgrove, Greenberg and Rasmussen are developing ways that help rebalance brain circuits to restore normal brain function in movement, mood and cognitive disorders.

A study by Dr. Linda Resnik is already on the way to providing our Veterans with the most advanced prosthetic limbs.

BrainGate is getting within a few years of fully implanted sensors, being developed by neuroengineer Arto Nurmikko, that allow wireless, brain-based control for people with severe paralysis.

I believe all of these “sci-fi” advances will become widely used in the next decade.

PBN: How does our understanding of how the brain functions in terms of memory and learning changed through your work?

DONOGHUE: We’re learning a lot about higher brain functions like learning and memory through research in the Institute. More than how my work changes that understanding, research of talented basic researchers in the Institute are changing our ability to create better brain interfaces.

A major grant from the U.S. Department of Defense to understand how to repair the damaged brain has allowed Brown professors Rebecca Burwell and David Sheinberg to experiment with memory and perception circuits in animal models using a technology that turns neurons on and off using light.

David Badre is studying how networks involving the most specialized parts of our brain can turn memories into action.

For BrainGate to work, we must understand how complex interactions in the brain lead from very abstract concepts to a specific behavior, like reaching out and grabbing your coffee cup for a sip.

On the other hand, our work is informing the scientific and clinical community about the operations of the human brain at the scale of groups of neurons, a view of our brain that has never before been available.

PBN: What kinds of opportunities are there for potential breakthrough therapies and drug treatments for diseases such as schizophrenia?

DONOGHUE: For all the progress we’re making in the many labs around Providence, we know there is a lot more to be done to understand, prevent and treat autism, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, addiction, or Alzheimer’s Disease.

One major focus of the Brown Institute for Brain Science is to accelerate our understanding of the brain’s networks, which is where many neuroscientists believe the most interesting functions emerge.

Increasing research in areas like systems and computational neuroscience will enhance our understanding of how those networks function, and sometimes break down, leading to schizophrenia or mood or thought disorders.

Eric Morrow’s work with stem cells is, to me, one of the most exciting new areas of research because it may provide critical clues at the level of brain connections and genes about the causes of autism.

Finally, the Brown Institute for Brain Science includes a large group of researchers interested in the fundamental processes that go wrong at the cellular, gene and molecular level leading to Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s of other neurodegenerative diseases. Finding basic, common mechanisms of disease is at the heart of learning how to treat or prevent them.

By Richard Asinof
Providence Business News

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VA, Brown dedicate neurorestoration center

Officials and some famous patients gathered Friday morning, Oct. 26, 2012, to dedicate the new $4.5-million Center for Neurorestoration and Neurotechnology at the Providence Veterans Administration Medical Center. The CfNN’s scientific leadership is jointly appointed by the VA and Brown.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — The Providence Veterans Administration Medical Center today announced a new research center, entirely led by scientists jointly affiliated with Brown University, that will develop and test technologies and therapies to help veterans with brain disorders, psychiatric conditions, and limb loss.

The VA funded the new Center of Excellence for Neurorestoration and Neurotechnology, with $4.5 million over five years. The CfNN involves more than 30 researchers overall, including some based at Butler Hospital and affiliated with Rhode Island Hospital and Massachusetts General Hospital.

“The VA Center for Neurorestoration and Neurotechnology brings together an exceptional group of scientists, clinicians, and engineers who carry out advanced research that’s leading to the latest cutting-edge technology and the newest therapies,” said John Donoghue, professor of neuroscience and engineering Brown and a research scientist at the VA, who directs the CfNN and the Brown Institute for Brain Science. “The research aims to restore the ability of our veterans to pursue fulfilling and independent lives.”

The CfNN is organized around two cores to support clinical trials and brain imaging, including Brown’s magnetic resonance imaging lab. It focuses on four areas of research: The BrainGate brain-computer interface to help people with severe paralysis; advancing prosthetics for upper-limb amputees; robotic- and computer-assisted rehabilitation for patients with strokes, multiple sclerosis, and other disorders; and neuromodulation technologies, such as electrical and magnetic brain stimulation to treat chronic pain, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, and other psychiatric disorders.

In a statement, Brown President Christina Paxson praised that mission.

“Advancing science to restore health and quality of life for people with neurological disorders and limb loss is a tremendously inspiring research mission,” Paxson said. “Brown University is proud join with our longtime partners at the Providence VA Medical Center in dedicating this new center. This public investment in a meaningful collaboration between government, academic, and hospital-based researchers has the potential to yield many beneficial innovations for veterans and others.”

In his remarks Donoghue noted that all four research projects are already engaged in clinical trials where innovations are being tested and translated with real patients.

Credit: David Orenstein/Brown University

A Historic Meeting

But for all the speeches on the program, which also included remarks by Gov. Lincoln Chafee, Dr. Joel Kupersmith, chief research officer for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, and Dr. Glenn Tung, associate dean of the Alpert Medical School, the loudest applause came at the very end when the two participants in the BrainGate research reported in the Nature paper in May were able to meet for the first time. Patients Bob (known in the paper as “T2”) came in from Connecticut and Cathy (known as “S3”) from Massachusetts.

Providence VA Chaplain Daniel Cottrell foreshadowed the meaning of the moment in his invocation: “May the mysteries unlocked not only be the success of science but the triumph of the human spirit.”

By David Orenstein

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How silver turns people blue

Ingesting silver — in antimicrobial health tonics or for extensive medical treatments involving silver — can cause argyria, condition in which the skin turns grayish-blue. Brown researchers have discovered how that happens.  The process is similar to developing black-and-white photographs, and it's not just the silver.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Researchers from Brown University have shown for the first time how ingesting too much silver can cause argyria, a rare condition in which patients’ skin turns a striking shade of grayish blue.

“It’s the first conceptual model giving the whole picture of how one develops this condition,” said Robert Hurt, professor of engineering at Brown and part of the research team. “What’s interesting here is that the particles someone ingests aren’t the particles that ultimately cause the disorder.”

Scientists have known for years argyria had something to do with silver. The condition has been documented in people who (ill advisedly) drink antimicrobial health tonics containing silver nanoparticles and in people who have had extensive medical treatments involving silver. Tissue samples from patients showed silver particles actually lodged deep in the skin, but it wasn’t clear how they got there.

As it turns out, argyria is caused by a complex series of chemical reactions, Hurt said. His paper on the subject, authored with Brown colleagues Jingyu Liu, Zhongying Wang, Frances Liu, and Agnes Kane, is published in the journal ACS Nano.

Robert Hurt

"The particles someone ingests 

aren't the particals that ultimately 

cause the disorders"

Hurt and his team show that nanosilver is broken down in the stomach, absorbed into the bloodstream as a salt and finally deposited in the skin, where exposure to light turns the salt back into elemental silver and creates the telltale bluish hue. That final stage, oddly, involves the same photochemical reaction used to develop black-and-white photographs.

From silver to salt and back again

Hurt and his team have been studying the environmental impact of silver, specifically silver nanoparticles, for years. They’ve found that nanosilver tends to corrode in acidic environments, giving off charged ions — silver salts — that can be toxic in large amounts. Hurt’s graduate student, Jingyu Liu (now a postdoctoral fellow at the National Institute of Standards and Technology), thought those same toxic ions might also be produced when silver enters the body, and could play a role in argyria.

To find out, the researchers mixed a series chemical treatments that could simulate what might happen to silver inside the body. One treatment simulated the acidic environment in the gastrointestinal tract; one mimicked the protein content of the bloodstream; and a collagen gel replicated the base membranes of the skin.

They found that nanosilver corrodes in stomach acid in much the same way it does in other acidic environments. Corrosion strips silver atoms of electrons, forming positively charged silver salt ions. Those ions can easily be taken into the bloodstream through channels that absorb other types of salt. That’s a crucial step, Hurt said. Silver metal particles themselves aren’t terribly likely to make it from the GI tract to the blood, but when they’re transformed into a salt, they’re ushered right through.

From there, Hurt and his team showed that silver ions bind easily with sulfur present in blood proteins, which would give them a free ride through the bloodstream. Some of those ions would eventually end up in the skin, where they’d be exposed to light.

To re-create this end stage, the researchers shined ultraviolet light on collagen gel containing silver ions. The light caused electrons from the surrounding materials to jump onto the unstable ions, returning them to their original state — elemental silver. This final reaction is ultimately what turns patients’ skin blue. The photoreaction is similar to the way silver is used in black and white photography. When exposed to light, silver salts on a photographic film reduce to elemental silver and darken, creating an image.

Implications for nanosilver

Despite its potential toxicity, silver has been valued for centuries for its ability to kill germs, which is why silver nanoparticles are used today in everything from food packaging to bandages. There are concerns however that this nanoparticle form of silver might pose a unique health threat all its own.

This research, however, “would be one piece of evidence that you could treat nanoparticles in the same way as other forms of silver,” Hurt says.

That’s because the bioavailable form of silver — the form that is absorbed into the bloodstream — is the silver salt that’s made in the stomach. Any elemental silver that’s ingested is just the raw material to make that bioavailable salt. So ingesting silver in any form, be it nano or not, would have basically the same effect, Hurt said.

“The concern in this case is the total dose of silver, not what form it’s in,” Hurt said. “This study implies that silver nanoparticles will be less toxic than an equivalent amount of silver salt, at least in this exposure scenario.”

The National Science Foundation and the Superfund Research Program of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences funded the research.

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