Day: 12/22/2011

Sony’s bio battery turns waste paper into electricity

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Sony has unveiled a paper-powered battery prototype in Japan.

The technology generates electricity by turning shredded paper into sugar which in turn is used as fuel.

If brought to market, the innovation could allow the public to top up the power of their mobile devices using waste material.

The team behind the project said such bio-batteries are environmentally friendly as they did not use harmful chemicals or metals.

The Japanese electronics giant showed off its invention at the Eco-Products exhibition in Tokyo last week.

Employees invited children to drop piece of paper and cardboard into a liquid made up of water and enzymes, and then to shake it. The equipment was connected to a small fan which began spinning a few minutes later.

Learning from nature

The process works by using the enzyme cellulase to decompose the materials into glucose sugar. These were then combined with oxygen and further enzymes which turned the material into electrons and hydrogen ions.

The electrons were used by the battery to generate electricity. Water and the acid gluconolactone, which is commonly used in cosmetics, were created as by-products.

Researchers involved in the project likened the mechanism to the one used by white ants and termites to digest wood and turn it into energy.

Their work builds on a previous project in which they used fruit juice to power a Walkman music player.

“Using a ‘fuel’ as simple as old greetings cards – the sort of cards that millions of us will be receiving this Christmas – the bio battery can deliver enough energy to power a small fan,” said Yuichi Tokita, senior researcher at Sony’s Advanced Material Research Lab.

“Of course, this is still at the very early stages of its development, but when you imagine the possibilities that this technology could deliver, it becomes very exciting indeed.”

Eco-friendly

While the battery is already powerful enough to run basic music players, it is still falls far short of commercially sold batteries.

The environmental campaign group Greenpeace welcomed the development.

“The issue that we always have with battery technology is the toxic chemicals that go into making them and recycling batteries is also complicated,” John Sauven, executive director of Greenpeace UK told the BBC.

“Any way to provide a greener technology could be a potential magic bullet. So from that point of view this is interesting, and I think it’s fantastic that companies like Sony are looking to make the generation of energy more environmentally friendly.”

Sony’s engineers are not the only ones exploring the concept of paper-based batteries.

In 2009 a team of Stanford University scientists revealed they were working on a battery created by coating sheets of paper with ink made of carbon nanotubes and silver nanowires. They said their work might ultimately lead to a device capable of lasting through 40,000 charge-discharge cycles.

source: sony.

LHC reports discovery of its first new particle

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The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) on the Franco-Swiss border has made its first clear observation of a new particle since opening in 2009.

It is called Chi-b (3P) and will help scientists understand better the forces that hold matter together.

The as-yet unpublished discovery is reported on the Arxiv pre-print server.

The LHC is exploring some of the fundamental questions in “big physics” by colliding proton particles together in a huge underground facility.

Detail in the sub-atomic wreckage from these impacts is expected to yield new information about the way the Universe is constructed.

The Chi-b (3P) is a more excited state of Chi particles already seen in previous collision experiments, explained Prof Roger Jones, who works on the Atlas detector at the LHC.

“The new particle is made up of a ‘beauty quark’ and a ‘beauty anti-quark’, which are then bound together,” he told BBC News.

“People have thought this more excited state should exist for years but nobody has managed to see it until now.

“It’s also interesting for what it tells us about the forces that hold the quark and the anti-quark together – the strong nuclear force. And that’s the same force that holds, for instance, the atomic nucleus together with its protons and the neutrons.”

The LHC is designed to fill in gaps in the Standard Model – the current framework devised to explain the interactions of sub-atomic particles – and also to look for any new physics beyond it.

In particular, it is using the collisions to try to pin down the famous Higgs particle, which physicists hypothesize can explain why matter has mass.

Discoveries such as Chi-b (3P) are an important part of this quest because they add to the wider background knowledge, says Prof Jones, from Lancaster University, UK.

“The better we understand the strong force, the more we understand a large part of the data that we see, which is quite often the background to the more exciting things we are looking for, like the Higgs.

“So, it’s helping put together that basic understanding that we have and need to do the new physics.”

source:BBC news online.

Johnson & Johnson Slams Door on International Mechanism to Increase Access to Treatment for People living with HIV/AIDS

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Company Refuses to License Patents on Three Lifesaving AIDS Drugs to Medicines Patent Pool

 

Despite continuing to earn record profits and a company credo that calls for putting patients first, on December 19, Johnson & Johnson continued to turn its back on people living with HIV/AIDS in many developing countries by telling the Pool it refused to license its patents on the HIV drugs rilpivirine, darunavir, and etravirine.

Over the past two years, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) has been urging Johnson & Johnson, and other companies holding HIV drug patents, to take this critical step of joining the Pool. The Pool would license patents on HIV drugs to other manufacturers and the resulting competition would dramatically reduce prices, making them much more affordable in the developing world and allow new combination medicines.

In refusing to join the Medicines Patent Pool, Johnson & Johnson says there is no urgency for making these drugs widely available in developing countries. That’s simply not true. MSF now provides treatment to more than 180,000 people living with HIV worldwide, and is beginning to witness the inevitable, natural phenomenon of treatment failure, whereby people develop resistance to the drugs they are taking and need to graduate to newer medicines.

Furthermore, rilpivirine, darunavir, and etravirine were identified among the key drug formulations needed for HIV treatment by the Medicines Patent Pool, UNITAID and the World Health Organization’s HIV/AIDS Department.

Why Joining the Medicines Patent Pool Matters for Access to Medicines

Newer, better antiretrovirals are already used by patients in the US and Europe, but aren’t available to people in developing countries or are simply too expensive. People living with HIV need access to these newer treatments, so they have the best chance of keeping the virus from further weakening their immune system as they navigate this life–long disease. By helping make these drugs more affordable, the Medicines Patent Pool will ensure the delivery of these newer drugs for people in the developing world.

Treating HIV is complex and often requires patients to take multiple drug cocktails. But by combining the different drugs into one easy-to-take pill, it is easier for patients to stick to their treatment. At the moment, it can be a struggle for generic producers to develop these much needed fixed–dose combinations, because different companies own the patents on the various drugs. By putting these patents under collective management, the Patent Pool will make it possible for many more combination therapies to be developed.

Although Johnson & Johnson is already engaging in voluntary licensing with some generic companies they decided against taking the extra step of joining the Pool to improve access for people living with HIV. The company’s proposal to expand access to its HIV medicines does not go far enough, and they know it.

In saying no to the Medicines Patent Pool, Johnson & Johnson has made a conscious, willful decision to turn its back on people living with HIV in the developing world. Last year, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which holds a partial patent on the Johnson & Johnson drug darunavir, licensed its part of the darunavir patent to the Pool. By refusing to join the Patent Pool, Johnson & Johnson has effectively made this NIH license useless.

Why Johnson & Johnson’s Response is Not Enough

Individual company drug pricing discounts or deals with specific countries or generic manufacturers limit the competition, which is what ultimately brings down prices. Unless Johnson & Johnson and other companies take part in a collective way forward to bring affordable medicines to more people in all developing countries, they are not part of the solution as they want the public to think. They are contributing to the problem. They want to control who can make and use their drugs based on their commercial needs rather than the needs of people living with HIV.

There are now more than six million people receiving lifesaving HIV treatment worldwide. This didn’t happen because individual companies lowered their prices for specific countries or worked out exclusive deals with certain generic companies, which is what Johnson & Johnson is doing with their newest HIV medicines. Antiretroviral treatment was made more accessible because of competition among many generic companies which helped bring prices down by 99 percent, from $10,000 per patient per year to roughly $150 per patient per year.

Going forward, mechanisms to promote generic competition by overriding patents—as allowed by international law—in addition to voluntary initiatives, such as the Medicines Patent Pool, will be crucial to ensuring that monopolies do not stand in the way of patients’ access to lifesaving drugs.

Continuing the Fight for Patients

The fight for our patients does not end here with this announcement from Johnson & Johnson. MSF will continue to press Johnson & Johnson and other companies holding patents on essential HIV/AIDS medicines to join the Medicines Patent Pool.

Ultimately, it is about breaking the double standard of access to essential medicines for patients living with HIV/AIDS in developing countries. For the sake of patients who are resistant to today’s treatment as well as patients of tomorrow who are still waiting for access to improved drugs, MSF will continue to call for real access to affordable medicines.

Source:MSF newsletter

 

Raltegravir Approved to Treat HIV in Children

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The FDA has approved raltegravir (Isentress) to treat HIV infection in children aged 2 to 18 years, the agency announced on Wednesday. The drug, an HIV integrase inhibitor, was first approved for use in adults in 2007.

Raltegravir’s pediatric indication follows a multicenter trial among 96 children and adolescents, in which HIV was undetectable in over half the participants after 24 weeks of treatment. The most frequently reported adverse effects were insomnia and headache.

Source:FDA.

 

 

 

Aliskiren Trial Halted Because of Adverse Events

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The antihypertensive drug aliskiren (Tekturna in the U.S., Rasilez in the European Union) should no longer be coadministered with angiotensin-converting–enzyme (ACE) inhibitors or angiotensin-receptor blockers (ARBs), the manufacturer announced Tuesday following the early termination of the ALTITUDE trial. Patients taking these combinations should be switched to another antihypertensive regimen.

In the study, patients with type 2 diabetes and impaired renal function were given aliskiren or placebo in addition to an ACE inhibitor or ARB. A data monitoring group opted to stop the trial after the aliskiren group had a higher-than-expected incidence of nonfatal stroke, renal complications, hyperkalemia, and hypotension after 18 to 24 months.

Source:Manufacturer news release.

 

Gastric Banding Complications May Present as Pulmonary Symptoms

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A Lancet case report shows that gastric banding can have late complications that present as pulmonary symptoms.

Investigators report on a 49-year-old woman who underwent gastric banding and some 18 months later presented with symptoms of a pulmonary infection that were not resolved with use of antibiotics. Examination with CT of the chest showed a cavitating lesion in the left upper lobe of the lung. The lesion and the patient’s symptoms completely resolved after the gastric band was emptied.

The authors conclude: “Patients who have undergone laparoscopic adjustable gastric banding should have chest radiography or thoracic CT scan, or both, if they present with respiratory symptoms.”

Source:Lancet case report.