Gizmorama - February 3, 2016

Good Morning,

When I was a kid my family doctor always said that fiber-optic technology would be the future of medicine. According to a new development, he may have been right... or he just watched Star Trek too much.

Learn about this and more interesting stories from the scientific community in today's issue.

Until Next Time,
Erin

P.S. Did you miss an issue? You can read every issue from the Gophercentral library of newsletters on our exhaustive archives page. Thousands of issues, all of your favorite publications in chronological order. You can read AND comment. Just click GopherArchives

***
*-- New fiber-optic technology could heal wounds, target tumors --*
EDINBURGH, Scotland - Light has healing properties, and a new fiber-optics technology developed by scientists at the University of St. Andrews promises to deliver those properties to damaged tissue.

The technology is called photochemical tissue bonding. Until now, it's been used only to treat superficial wounds. Researchers have developed a technique that allows the light to penetrate deeper into human tissue.

Scientists developed biodegradable optical fibers capable of carrying light beneath the surface of a wound, delivering the light's healing powers to a local point internally.

Fiber-optic strands for catheters are normally made of glass or plastic. Removing them from a healed wound can cause damage to the new tissue. Because the newly developed fibers can be naturally absorbed into tissue, the risks of removal are eliminated.

Researchers, who detailed their new invention in the journal Nature Communications, believe their findings could have useful application beyond boosting tissue regeneration.

The fiber-optic technology could improve a light-based cancer treatment technique known as photodynamic therapy. It could also be used in medical imaging.

"A variety of optical techniques, such as photochemical tissue bonding and photodynamic therapy, require efficient delivery of light deep into tissues, but the current limited penetration of light in tissue constitutes a serious constraint in clinical use," lead researcher Malte Gather said in a news release.

"Having biocompatible and bioabsorbable optical components may transform photomedicine from a discipline where light is predominantly applied externally, to a new paradigm based on tissue-integrated and precisely controlled delivery and collection of light."


*-- Ancient Babylonians used geometry to track Jupiter --*
BERLIN - New translations and analysis of ancient tablets suggest the ancient Babylonians used geometry, not simple arithmetic, to track the path of Jupiter.

The tablets are dated to between 350 and 50 B.C., some 1,400 years prior to what scientists previously thought was the first use of geometry in Europe.

"The new interpretation reveals that Babylonian astronomers also used geometrical methods," Mathieu Ossendrijver, a researcher at Humboldt University in Germany, confirmed in a press release.

Ossendrijver's research was published this week in the journal Science.

Four of the tablets have been known since their discovery in Babylon, near the temple Esagila, in the 19th century. But the more recent emergence of a 5th tablet helped illuminate the mathematics described on the first four.

No drawings or shapes are included on the tablets, but Ossendrijver analysis suggest they describe in Cuneiform script how Babylonian mathematicians visualized Jupiter's path in the form of a trapezoid. The trapezoid was formed by plotting the two main variables, Jupiter's velocity over time.

The area of the graphed trapezoid represents the distance Jupiter travels in 60 days. The mathematicians could divide the trapezoid in half to determine the distance traveled in 30 days.

"These computations anticipate the use of similar techniques by European scholars, but they were carried out at least 14 centuries earlier," said Ossendrijver.

Greek mathematicians also used trapezoids, but only to calculate actual space. The Babylonian technique uses the trapezoid in an abstract sense -- its variables speed and time, not the width and height of a coliseum.

"Ancient Greek astronomers used a lot of geometrical techniques, but the geometrical figures that they use are always situated in a real space, with either two- or three-spatial dimensions," Ossendrijver explained. "The Babylonian geometrical methods discussed here involve figures that are defined in a more abstract mathematical space obtained by drawing velocity against time, almost in a modern fashion."

***
Missed an Issue? Visit the Gizmorama Archives