New Sprayable Liquid Wound Dressing to Improve Care on the Battlefield

Researchers are developing a new, sprayable liquid wound dressing technology that an injured warrior could apply one handed in a combat setting. The spray forms a tough hydrogel in seconds that conforms directly to the wound without sticking to it when removed.

The GelSprayTM Liquid Bandage was approved by the U.S. FDA for minor cuts and irritations in 2008, and its developers are preparing for a human clinical study required to extend the technology to battlefield care. The team is also working on variations that include medications to treat infection, speed healing and relieve pain.

Explains investigator Dr. Joachim Kohn of Rutgers University, “Because GelSpray conforms to the wound bed while in direct contact with the wound margins, it offers significant clinical advantages: The thick, protective film limits bleeding, absorbs wound fluids and directly transports medication to the entire wound bed. It does not significantly adhere to the wound bed—unlike most other dressings, where there is re-bleeding or delayed healing due to removal of granulation tissue whenever the wound dressing is removed.”

The GelSpray product for the far forward Soldier is designed for lacerations, small burns and gunshot and shrapnel wounds that are often on irregular surfaces such as the hand, face, neck and outer ear. It is meant to provide flexible protection that enables the Soldier to complete his or her mission.

Col. Dallas Hack, director of the U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command’s Combat Casualty Care Research Program, says, “This technology shows promise for quicker wound healing with less care needed. The dressing is breathable, and if it can include an antimicrobial to prevent infection, then we may not need to damage tissue further through debridement [removing dead or contaminated tissue].”

Kohn is the principal investigator of the Center for Military Biomaterials Research (CeMBR), a network of academic, industry and military organizations whose mission is to support wounded warriors on and off the battlefield with practical, leading edge innovations. He notes, “CeMBR partnered with BioCure, Inc., to develop the GelSpray technology. Under the leadership of BioCure co-investigator Sameer Shums, we have made significant progress.”

CeMBR research programs are supported and guided by USAMRMC’s Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research Center. “Feedback provided by TATRC’s national expert review panels has guided our product design efforts,” says Kohn. “TATRC and our program manager there, Wilbur Malloy, have provided us unwavering support.”

Kohn adds, “Our goal is to address the most critical needs of injured warriors for improved wound dressings. There is no other product that provides all these benefits and is specifically designed to meet military requirements.”

Rutgers VP of Research on the Impact of the Recovery Act

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) headlined a Capitol Hill press conference on November 17 at which AAU, the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities, and The Science Coalition announced the launch of ScienceWorksForUS, their joint initiative to inform the public of the benefits of the Recovery Act research investment. The focus of the project is a website (www.ScienceWorksForUS.org) that highlights Recovery Act-sponsored research in all 50 states.

Speaker Pelosi was joined at the press event by Representative Rush Holt (D-NJ), House Science and Technology Committee Chairman Bart Gordon (D-TN), and Representatives Ed Markey (D-MA) and Bill Foster (D-IL), as well as University of Arizona President Robert Shelton. Also participating were University of Pennsylvania Vice Provost for Research Steven Fluharty, Rutgers Vice President for Research Michael Pazzani, Ohio State Vice President for Research Caroline C. Whitacre, and researchers from Princeton and Johns Hopkins.

Dr. Pazzani's remarks on the impact of the Recovery Act research investment are below:

I’d like to thank Speaker Pelosi, Rush Holt, other representatives, congress and the adminstration for making the recovery act possible.

The website Recovery.rutgers.edu lists all grants and cumulative dollars, stories, but I want to highlight a few projects and their impacts, starting with one of our smallest.

• Professor Mark Gluck received a supplement to his existing NIH grant on Parkinson’s disease. This allowed him to hire two undergraduate honors students. In previous years, Rutgers students might have found part-time employments at Circuit City a company that was affected by economic downturn. In the short term, this grant provides students some funds for living expenses. The long-term impact may be more significant. Both students have decided to pursue graduate degrees adding to the talent base of the US. One of these students may very well find a cure for Parkinson’s disease.
  


• Piotr Piotrowiak received an NSF instrumentation grant to develop an Ultrafast Fluorescence Microscope. This grant requires purchase of a state-of-the-art laser from a small company in Boulder, Colorado advancing reserach in New Jersey and helping a small company make a sale that otherwise would not have occured.



• Danielle McCarthy, who received her Ph.D. in 2006, was awarded an NIH Challenge grant “Phenotypic Markers for Smoking Cessation: Impulsive Choice and Impulsive Action.” Over 20,000 proposals were submitted for this and fewer than 1000 have funded after a rigorous and very competitive review process. This competition in US system of funding research builds excellence and is the model being adopted by other countries. Rather than giving a block grant to Rutgers, funds were given to federal agencies where a merit review system selects the proposals with the greatest potential. We are grateful to the employees of NIH and NSF who had to lead the review of tens of thousands of additional proposals this year. I am pleased that the review process found merit in the proposal of an assistant professor rather than simply providing additional funds to already established senior researchers.



• Professor Tamara Minko received a NIH award for “Targeted Proapoptotic Anticancer Drug Delivery System.” Today’s Anticancer Drugs are effective at killing cancer cells but also kill other cells in the body, resulting in side effects such as loss of hair and suppressed immune systems. With targeted delivery systems potent drugs can have an effect where needed with fewer side effects. Dr. Minko’s proposal was submitted last year to NIH as a five-year project, judged to be meritorious, but declined due to a lack of funds. The ARRA funds made it possible to get started on a two-year project on this important topic.



• An NIH supplement was received by Dr. Richard Ebright of Rutgers Waksman institute, named after Selman Waksmans, the Rutgers faculty member that discovered streptomycin, the cure for tuberculosis. Dr. Ebright is working on new antibiotics that are effective against bacteria that have developed resistance to streptomycin and other antibiotics. He already has several promising leads.

In the short-term, the over 100 recovery act grants that Rutgers received are providing jobs on Rutgers campus for researchers and technicians and indirectly to companies that supply equipment and services to Rutgers. In the long-term, these grants are increasing the scientific and engineering talent and creating innovations that will lead to a robust economy in future decades.


Photo Credit: V. Hume, The Science Coalition

SUPERCONDUCTING NANOCIRCUITS FOR PROTECTED QUBITS

The realization of quantum computers promises an enormous speed up in the solution of many important problems. Over the last decade, a very impressive progress has been made in the realization of solid-state quantum systems (both superconductor- and semiconductor-based) that can, potentially, operate as building blocks of a quantum computer (qubits). Scalability is an important advantage of these solid-state systems: they can be realized by conventional nanofabrication methods. However, the quantum states of these macroscopic systems are fragile: the state-of-the-art solid-state qubits strongly interact with uncontrollable degrees of freedom in their environment. The fast decoherence of the solid-state qubits remains the main roadblock on the path to a large-scale quantum computing.

At Rutgers, a novel approach to the protection of superconducting qubits has been proposed [1]. It is based on preventing qubit's errors at the "hardware" level, by building a fault-free logical qubit from "faulty" physical qubits with properly engineered interactions between them. Such interactions result in a highly-entangled collective state protected from all local noises. Recently, the first prototypes of topologically protected qubits made of nanoscale Josephson junctions have been developed and fabricated [2] at Rutgers. The proof-of-concept experiments with these prototype devices show that the nanocircuits are indeed protected against magnetic flux variations, in line with theoretical predictions.

This research, supported by NSF, DARPA and IARPA has strong potential for developing a fundamentally new class of superconducting logical elements of a quantum computer that would be protected from all sources of local noises.

The SEM image of a prototype of the topologically-protected qubit: an array of nanoscale Josephson junctions formed at intersections of aluminum strips.

1. L.B. Ioffe and M.V. Feigelman, Possible realization of an ideal quantum computer in Josephson junction array. Phys. Rev. B 66, 224503 (2002); Doucot, B., Feigelman, M.V., Ioffe, L.B., & Ioselevich, A.S. Protected qubits and Chern-Simons theories in Josephson junction arrays. Phys. Rev. B 71, 024505 (2005).

2. S. Gladchenko, D. Olaya, E. Dupont-Ferrier, B. Douçot, L.B. Ioffe, and M.E. Gershenson, Superconducting Nanocircuits for Topologically Protected Qubits, Nature Physics 5, 48-53 (2009).

Contact: Prof. Michael Gershenson Ph: 732-445-5500 ext. 3180, E-mail: gersh@physics.rutgers.edu

Prof. Lev Ioffe Ph. 732-445-5500 ext. 4605, E-mail: ioffe@physics.rutgers.edu

It's Funny Because It's True: Scientific American Podcast

This month in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior Robert Lynch of Rutgers University published the first scientific evidence for the conventional folk wisdom: it’s funny because it’s true.

Full Story: Scientific American Podcast

Rutgers Professor Stacy Bonos receives early career award

NEW BRUNSWICK, NJ — Stacy Bonos, assistant professor at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, has been selected by the multi-state Plant Breeding Coordinating Committee (PBCC) to receive its inaugural Early Career Excellence in Plant Breeding Award. The award was announced at the annual scientific meeting of the PBCC on Aug. 4, 2009. As the award recipient, Bonos has been invited to present her research and anchor a roundtable discussion for graduate students at the 2010 meeting.

In her breeding research for turf and biofuels, Bonos uses diverse plant genetic resources to develop new plant types that are more tolerant of pests and poor or dry soils. Her varieties are robust without excessive use of pesticides, and require less fertilizer and water compared to earlier varieties. These are important advantages that give lawns and golf courses smaller environmental footprints. They also help make biofuel production more sustainable.

Full Story: Athletic Turf

REEF RECOVERY: Rutgers University Haskin Shellfish Laboratory

New Jersey's oysters were long thought to be sextinguished by pollution and shellfish disease.

Now, restoration projects from Raritan Bay to the Delaware River offer tantalizing possibilities for a modest revival of some of the world's once famous — and now nearly forgotten — shellfish beds.

Recycling calcium shell from the offshore clam fishery looks like one way to reverse the collapse of East Coast oyster populations, and help them hold on against disease and climate change, says Eric Powell, a research scientist with the Rutgers University Haskin Shellfish Laboratory in Bivalve.

Full Story: Asbury Park Press

Rutgers physicists discover novel electronic properties in two-dimensional carbon structure

Previously predicted but unobserved interactions between massless particles may lead to speedy, powerful electronic devices. Rutgers researchers have discovered novel electronic properties in two-dimensional sheets of carbon atoms called graphene that could one day be the heart of speedy and powerful electronic devices.

The new findings, previously considered possible by physicists but only now being seen in the laboratory, show that electrons in graphene can interact strongly with each other. The behavior is similar to superconductivity observed in some metals and complex materials, marked by the flow of electric current with no resistance and other unusual but potentially useful properties. In graphene, this behavior results in a new liquid-like phase of matter consisting of fractionally charged quasi-particles, in which charge is transported with no dissipation.

In a paper issued online by the prestigious science journal Nature and slated for print publication in the coming weeks, physics professor Eva Andrei and her Rutgers colleagues note that the strong interaction between electrons, also called correlated behavior, had not been observed in graphene in spite of many attempts to coax it out. This led some scientists to question whether correlated behavior could even be possible in graphene, where the electrons are massless (ultra-relativistic) particles like photons and neutrinos. In most materials, electrons are particles that have mass.

"Our work demonstrated that earlier failures to observe correlated behavior were not due to the physical nature of graphene," said Eva Andrei, physics professor in the Rutgers School of Arts and Sciences. "Rather, it was because of interference from the material which supported graphene samples and the type of electrical probes used to study it."

Andrei's collaborators were Xu Du, now on faculty at Stony Brook University; Ivan Skachko, a post-doctoral fellow; Fabian Duerr, a master's student; and Adina Luican, a doctoral student. The research was supported by the Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation, the Institute for Complex Adaptive Matter and Alcatel-Lucent.

Full Story: Rutgers physicists discover novel electronic properties in two-dimensional carbon structure