Nano-machines for “Bionic Proteins”

Physicists of the University of Vienna together with researchers from the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Vienna developed nano-machines which recreate principal activities of proteins. They present the first versatile and modular example of a fully artificial protein-mimetic model system, thanks to the Vienna Scientific Cluster (VSC), a high performance computing infrastructure. These “bionic proteins” could play an important role in innovating pharmaceutical research. The results have now been published in the renowned journal “Physical Review Letters”.

Proteins are the fundamental building blocks of all living organism we currently know. Because of the large number and complexity of bio-molecular processes they are capable of, proteins are often referred to as “molecular machines”. Take for instance the proteins in your muscles: At each contraction stimulated by the brain, an uncountable number of proteins change their structures to create the collective motion of the contraction. This extraordinary process is performed by molecules which have a size of only about a nanometer, a billionth of a meter. Muscle contraction is just one of the numerous activities of proteins: There are proteins that transport cargo in the cells, proteins that construct other proteins, there are even cages in which proteins that “mis-behave” can be trapped for correction, and the list goes on and on. “Imitating these astonishing bio-mechanical properties of proteins and transferring them to a fully artificial system is our long term objective”, says Ivan Coluzza from the Faculty of Physics of the University of Vienna, who works on this project together with colleagues of the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Vienna.

Simulations thanks to Vienna Scientific Cluster (VSC)
In a recent paper in Physical Review Letters, the team presented the first example of a fully artificial bio-mimetic model system capable of spontaneously self-knotting into a target structure. Using computer simulations, they reverse engineered proteins by focusing on the key elements that give them the ability to execute the program written in the genetic code. The computationally very intensive simulations have been made possible by access to the powerful Vienna Scientific Cluster (VSC), a high performance computing infrastructure operated jointly by the University of Vienna, the Vienna University of Technology and the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Vienna.

Artificial proteins in the laboratory
The team now works on realizing such artificial proteins in the laboratory using specially functionalized nanoparticles. The particles will then be connected into chains following the sequence determined by the computer simulations, such that the artificial proteins fold into the desired shapes. Such knotted nanostructures could be used as new stable drug delivery vehicles and as enzyme-like, but more stable, catalysts.

'Bionic man' goes on show at British museum

A “bionic man” costing one million dollars went on display on Tuesday at Britain’s Science Museum, complete with artificial organs, synthetic blood and robot limbs.

Named Rex, which is short for “Robotic Exoskeleton”, the six foot six inch (two metre) humanoid with its uncannily life-like face was assembled by leading roboticists for a television programme.

Although cheaper than the “Six Million Dollar Man” made famous by the cult 1970s television series starring Lee Majors, the technology is far advanced from the fictional bionics on show back then.

The creation includes key advances in prosthetic technology, as well as an artificial pancreas, kidney, spleen and trachea and a functional blood circulatory system.

Welcoming Rex to the museum in London on Tuesday was Swiss social psychologist Bertolt Meyer, who was himself born without a left hand and has a sophisticated bionic replacement.

"I’ve looked around for new bionic technologies, out of personal interest, for a very long time and I think that until five or six years ago nothing much was happening," Meyer said.

"Then suddenly we are now at a point where we can build a body that is great and beautiful in its own special way."

The museum exhibit, which opens to the public on Thursday, will explore changing perceptions of human identity against the background of rapid progress in bionics—although Rex is not strictly bionic as he does not include living tissue.

Will we ever… have cyborg brains?

For the first time in over 15 years, Cathy Hutchinson brought a coffee to her lips and smiled. Cathy had suffered from the paralysing effects of a stroke, but when neurosurgeons implanted tiny recording devices in her brain, she could use her thought patterns to guide a robot arm that delivered her hot drink. This week, it was reported that Jan Scheuermann, who is paralysed from the neck down, could grasp and move a variety of objects by controlling a robotic arm with her mind.

In both cases the implants convert brain signals into digital commands that a robotic device can follow. It’s a remarkable achievement, one that could transform the lives of people debilitated through illness.

Yet it’s still a far cry from the visions of man fused with machine, or cyborgs, that grace computer games or sci-fi. The dream is to create the type of brain augmentations we see in fiction that provide cyborgs with advantages or superhuman powers. But the ones being made in the lab only aim to restore lost functionality – whether it’s brain implants that restore limb control, or cochlear implants for hearing.

Creating implants that improve cognitive capabilities, such as an enhanced vision “gadget” that can be taken from a shelf and plugged into our brain, or implants that can restore or enhance brain function is understandably a much tougher task. But some research groups are being to make some inroads.

For instance, neuroscientists Matti Mintz from Tel Aviv University and Paul Verschure from Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona, Spain, are trying to develop an implantable chip that can restore lost movement through the ability to learn new motor functions, rather than regaining limb control. Verschure’s team has developed a mathematical model that mimics the flow of signals in the cerebellum, the region of the brain that plays an important role in movement control. The researchers programmed this model onto a circuit and connected it with electrodes to a rat’s brain. If they tried to teach the rat a conditioned motor reflex – to blink its eye when it sensed an air puff – while its cerebellum was “switched off” by being anaesthetised, it couldn’t respond. But when the team switched the chip on, this recorded the signal from the air puff, processed it, and sent electrical impulses to the rat’s motor neurons. The rat blinked, and the effect lasted even after it woke up.

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Electronic brain hacks are turning insects into robotic helpers

We’re a long way from directly controlling human minds remotely, but recent years have seen a string of breakthroughs in hacking the minds of insects. Insect brains are probably the simplest interesting brains, as insects can perform a range of tasks (flying, smelling, carrying, etc.) with brains that have numbers of neurons orders of magnitude less than those in complex vertebrates. A fruit fly has around 100,00 neurons, compared to 85 billion in humans.

So at the conjunction of neuroscience and robotics lie insects — their tiny brains still too complex to model completely, but offering an easy way into modelling certain parts of the brain. It’s how engineers from Sheffield and Sussex universities can claim they’re preparing to upload the smell and sight parts of a bee’s brain into a bee-like flying robot, enmeshed with human-created software to create a completely new “brain”.

The hope is that the bee-bot could fly in areas that other robots can’t fit, like a collapsed building. And it makes sense to use nature’s own smell modules instead of developing new ones — their combination of efficiency in size and operation is so far unmatched by anything synthetic. A bee-bot could smell out explosives in a warzone, or drugs in shipping containers, or any of many other myriad uses, and actually go investigate. They can even be used as little spies. Who would notice a fly sitting on the wall of a meeting room?

A lot of research in the area of bug brains is being funded by the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa), the Pentagon agency which seeks out new technologies for military use. It’s not hard to imagine a future where drones are grown on farms, with extra controls implanted at the larval stage — a process developed by bionic researchers at North Carolina State University.

Robot Suit HAL

“Robot Suit HAL" is a cyborg-type robot that can supplement, expand or improve physical capability.

When a person attempts to move, nerve signals are sent from the brain to the muscles via motoneurons, moving the musculoskeletal system as a consequence. At this moment, very weak biosignals can be detected on the surface of the skin. “HAL” catches these signals through a sensor attached on the skin of the wearer. Based on the signals obtained, the power unit is controlled to move the joint in unison with the wearer’s muscle movement, enabling HAL to support the wearer’s daily activities. This is what we call a ‘voluntary control system’ that provides movement interpreting the wearer’s intention from the biosignals in advance of the actual movement. Not only a ‘voluntary control system’ “HAL” has, but also a ‘robotic autonomous control system’ that provides human-like movement based on a robotic system which integrally work together with the ‘autonomous control system’. “HAL” is the world’s first cyborg-type robot controlled by this unique Hybrid System.

"HAL" is expected to be applied in various fields such as rehabilitation support and physical training support in medical field, ADL support for disabled people, heavy labour support at factories, and rescue support at disaster sites, as well as in the entertainment field.

(Source: cyberdyne.jp)

The £90,000 ‘robolegs’ that got me out of my wheelchair: How one woman stood on her own feet nine years after she was paralysed

It is an extraordinary sight. From the waist up, 27-year-old Sophie Morgan is every inch the pretty blonde girl-next-door. But from the waist down, with her legs encased in £90,000 of motorised carbon-fibre, she is RoboCop.

Sophie’s thumb manipulates a joystick built into the armrests of her suit, causing the legs to hiss and whirr into life, before she takes three slow but sure steps. Her face breaks into a broad grin.

Five minutes earlier, Sophie was in her wheelchair. She was left paralysed from the chest down in a car crash nine years ago that shattered her spine. Over the years, Sophie, an aspiring television presenter who appeared in Channel 4’s Paralympics coverage, had come to accept that she would never walk again.

You, robot?

Technology and regulation: A research project considers how the law should deal with technologies that blur man and machine

SPEAKING at a conference organised by The Economist earlier this year, Hugh Herr, a roboticist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, described disabilities as conditions that persist “because of poor technology” and made the bold claim that during the 21st century disability would be largely eliminated. What gave his words added force was that half way through his speech, after ten minutes of strolling around the stage, he unexpectedly pulled up his trouser legs to reveal his bionic legs, and then danced a little jig. In future, he suggested, people might choose to replace an arthritic, painful limb with a fully functional robotic one. “Why wouldn’t you replace it?” he asked. “We’re going to see a lot of unusual situations like that.”

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Mr. Abicca, a 17-year-old from San Diego, is essentially wearing a robot. His bionic suit consists of a pair of mechanical braces wrapped around his legs and electric muscles that do much of the work of walking. It is controlled by a computer on his back and a pair of crutches held in his arms that look like futuristic ski poles.

Since an accident involving earth-moving equipment three years ago that damaged his spinal cord, Mr. Abicca has been unable to walk on his own. The suit, made by a company called Ekso Bionics, is an effort to change that.