Vasily Kolchenko, associate professor of biological sciences at New York City College of Technology (City Tech), is a key player on a research team that recently made a breakthrough with enormous potential significance for the treatment of serious diseases.

Their work has made it possible, for the first time, to detect the smallest virus particle. Since even one viral particle can represent a deadly threat, the research likely will make an important contribution to ongoing research on early detection of such diseases as AIDS and cancer.

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Ever since the Wright brothers, engineers have been working to develop bigger and better flying machines that maximize lift while minimizing drag.

There has always been a need to efficiently carry more people and more cargo. And so the science and engineering of getting large aircraft off the ground is very well understood.

But what about flight at a small scale? Say the scale of a dragonfly, a bird or a bat?

Hui Hu, an Iowa State University associate professor of aerospace engineering, said there hasn’t been a need to understand the airflow, the eddies and the spinning vortices created by flapping wings and so there haven’t been many engineering studies of small-scale flight. But that’s changing.

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Here’s a reason to be glad about madder: The climbing plant has the potential to make a greener rechargeable battery.

Scientists at Rice University and the City College of New York have discovered that the madder plant, aka Rubia tinctorum, is a good source of purpurin, an organic dye that can be turned into a highly effective, natural cathode for lithium-ion batteries. The plant has been used since ancient times to create dye for fabrics.

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Special underwater coatings prevent shells and other organisms from growing on the hull of ships – but biocide paints are ecologically harmful. Together with the industry, researchers have developed more environmentally friendly alternatives.

If a ship is at anchor for longer periods algae, shells and barnacles will colonize it. Every year, this so-called biofouling causes economic losses of billions of Dollar. Biological growth on the underwater surface promotes corrosion. The deposits increase the roughness of the hull below the waterline which has a braking effect as the ship travels. Depending on the roughness of the basified bio layer, the consumption of fuel can increase by up to 40 percent. In the case of a large container ship this can result in additional annual costs of several millions.

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This month, Molecular Pharmaceutics reported promising findings from the Nemours Center for Childhood Cancer Research and the Materials Science and Engineering Department at the University of Delaware, about the potential for nanotechnology to deliver chemotherapeutic agents in a way that attacks cancer cells without harming healthy cells.

To date, nanoparticle-based drug delivery approaches have been poorly developed for the treatment of childhood leukemia, which comprises 30 percent of childhood cancers. In the Nemours study, encapsulated dexamethasone (“dex”) delivered to pre-clinical models with leukemia significantly improved the quality of life and survival compared to the control receiving the unencapsulated drug.

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