Grand Challenges: Gates Foundation Grant Supports Tissue Engineered Model of Lymphatic System
Georgia Tech has won a Grand Challenges Explorations award to develop a tissue-engineered model of the human lymphatic system that will support laboratory research into lymphatic filariasis, a parasitic disease known to cause elephantiasis. According to the World Health Organization, the mosquito-borne disease affects more than 120 million persons in tropical areas of the world, and can cause severe disfigurement.
Liquid Doughnuts: Soft Matter Offers New Approaches to Studying How Ordered Materials Arrange Themselves Inside Non-spherical Spaces
A fried breakfast food popular in Spain provided the inspiration for the development of doughnut-shaped droplets that may provide scientists with a new approach for studying fundamental issues in physics, mathematics and materials. The droplets, in a shape known as toroidal, are formed from two dissimilar liquids using a simple rotating stage and an injection needle.
Learning from Ants: Principles of Locomotion in Confined Spaces Could Help Future Robot Teams Work Underground
Future teams of subterranean search and rescue robots may owe their success to the lowly fire ant, a much despised insect whose painful bites and extensive networks of underground tunnels are all-too-familiar to people living in the southern United States.
Drug Targeting: Protein Study Suggests Drug Side Effects are Inevitable – and that Basic Physics Enabled Early Biochemistry
A new study of computer-created and natural proteins suggests that the number of unique pockets – sites where small molecule pharmaceutical compounds can bind to proteins – is surprisingly small. This means that drug side effects may be impossible to avoid.
Oxygen-Free: RNA Was Capable of Catalyzing Electron Transfer on Early Earth with Iron’s Help, Study Suggests
A new study shows how complex biochemical transformations may have been possible under conditions that existed when life began on the early Earth. The study shows that RNA is capable of catalyzing electron transfer under conditions similar to those of the early Earth.
Biology of the Brain: Georgia Tech Researchers Seek a Better Understanding of the Brain
Researchers at Georgia Tech are applying their expertise, tools and techniques to understand on a fundamental level how the brain works. Because the human brain is immensely complex, the researchers are pursuing many levels of inquiry – from molecules to cells to circuits to the mystery of the mind itself – and also studying brain disorders and development, along with daily feats of brain activity, such as vision, speech, movement and memory.
May 21, 2013 — Georgia Tech has won a Grand Challenges Explorations award to develop a tissue-engineered model of the human lymphatic system that will support laboratory research into lymphatic filariasis, a parasitic disease known to cause elephantiasis. According to the World Health Organization, the mosquito-borne disease affects more than 120 million persons in tropical areas of the world, and can cause severe disfigurement.
May 21, 2013 — A fried breakfast food popular in Spain provided the inspiration for the development of doughnut-shaped droplets that may provide scientists with a new approach for studying fundamental issues in physics, mathematics and materials. The droplets, in a shape known as toroidal, are formed from two dissimilar liquids using a simple rotating stage and an injection needle.
May 20, 2013 — Future teams of subterranean search and rescue robots may owe their success to the lowly fire ant, a much despised insect whose painful bites and extensive networks of underground tunnels are all-too-familiar to people living in the southern United States.
May 20, 2013 — A new study of both computer-created and natural proteins suggests that the number of unique pockets – sites where small molecule pharmaceutical compounds can bind to proteins – is surprisingly small, meaning drug side effects may be impossible to avoid. The study also found that the fundamental biochemical processes needed for life could have been enabled by the simple physics of protein folding.
May 19, 2013 — A new study shows how complex biochemical transformations may have been possible under conditions that existed when life began on the early Earth. The study shows that RNA is capable of catalyzing electron transfer under conditions similar to those of the early Earth.
Spring/Summer 2012 Research Horizons — Researchers at Georgia Tech are applying their expertise, tools and techniques to understand on a fundamental level how the brain works. Because the human brain is immensely complex, the researchers are pursuing many levels of inquiry – from molecules to cells to circuits to the mystery of the mind itself – and also studying brain disorders and development, along with daily feats of brain activity, such as vision, speech, movement and memory.
April 27, 2013 — A new study shows how the strength and timing of competing molecular signals during brain development has generated natural and presumably adaptive differences in a brain region known as the telencephalon — much earlier than scientists had previously believed.
April 26, 2013 — Using bundles of vertical zinc oxide nanowires, researchers have fabricated arrays of piezotronic transistors capable of converting mechanical motion directly into electronic controlling signals. The arrays could help give robots a more adaptive sense of touch, provide better security in handwritten signatures and offer new ways for humans to interact with electronic devices.
April 23, 2013 — Based on a study of both hatchling sea turtles and “FlipperBot” — a robot with flippers — Georgia Tech researchers have learned principles for how both robots and turtles move on granular surfaces such as sand.
April 23, 2013 — To study the effects of improvised explosive devices on soldiers and help provide continuing treatment, researchers have developed a sensor system that measures the physical environment of an explosion and collects data that can correlate what the soldier experienced with long-term outcomes.
