Scientists at the University of Southampton have developed smart nanomaterials, which can disrupt the blood supply to cancerous tumours.
The team of researchers, led by Physics lecturer Dr Antonios Kanaras, showed that a small dose of gold nanoparticles can activate or inhibit genes that are involved in angiogenesis - a complex process responsible for the supply of oxygen and nutrients to most types of cancer.
"The peptide-functionalised gold nanoparticles that we synthesised are very effective in the deliberate activation or inhibition of angiogenic genes,â? said Dr Kanaras.
The team went a step further to control the degree of damage to the endothelial cells using laser illumination. Endothelial cells construct the interior of blood vessels and play a pivotal role in angiogenesis.
The researchers also found that the gold particles could be used as effective tools in cellular nanosurgery.
"We have found that gold nanoparticles can have a dual role in cellular manipulation. Applying laser irradiation, we can use the nanoparticles either to destroy endothelial cells, as a measure to cut the blood supply to tumours, or to deliberately open up the cellular membrane in order to deliver a drug efficiently," said Dr Kanaras.
The researchers are almost midway through their research and have published two related papers (NanoLett. 2011, 11 (3), 1358â1363 , Small 2011, 7, No. 3, 388â394) with another one submitted for publication and four more planned throughout this year. Their major target is to develop a complete nanotechnology toolkit to manipulate angiogenesis. To make this a reality within five to ten years they continue to seek funding.
For further information about this news story contact Joyce Lewis; tel. 023 8059 5453
Astronomers at the University of Southampton are part of an international team which has just revealed some striking features in the gases emitted from the regions close to one of the brightest, supermassive black holes known to us.
Astronomers at the University of Southampton are part of an international team which has just revealed some striking features in the gases emitted from the regions close to one of the brightest, supermassive black holes known to man.
The team, led by Dr Jelle Kaastra from the SRON Netherlands Institute for Space Research observed and mapped the environment around this 'monster' black hole which is in the distant galaxy Markarian 509 and has a mass 300 million times that of the sun.
The researchers found a very hot 'convertor' corona hovering above the black hole and cold gas 'bullets' in hotter diffuse gas, speeding outwards with velocities up to 700 km/s.
According to Dr Gabriele Ponti of Physics and Astronomy at Southampton, who is leading the studies related to the emission produced by the iron present in the nucleus of the galaxy, this discovery allows astronomers to locate the outflowing matter and, for the first time, to show that it is not a continuous flow, but formed by at least five distinct components, like âbulletsâ.
"We now know that not all matter around a black hole is swallowed up," he said. "Our studies allow us to understand that most of the visible outflowing gas is blown off from a dusty gas torus surrounding the central region and located at more than 15 light years from the black hole, moreover to examine the impact of these bullets on the host galaxy."
The international consortium responsible for this campaign consists of 26 astronomers from 21 institutes on four continents. The first results of this campaign will be published in a series of seven papers in Astronomy and Astrophysics. More results are in preparation.
The set of papers can be accessed at:
paper I: http://www.aanda.org/10.1051/0004-6361/201116869
paper II: http://www.aanda.org/10.1051/0004-6361/201116870
paper III: http://www.aanda.org/10.1051/0004-6361/201116899
paper IV: http://www.aanda.org/10.1051/0004-6361/201116875
paper V: http://www.aanda.org/10.1051/0004-6361/201117067
paper VI: http://www.aanda.org/10.1051/0004-6361/201117123
paper VII: http://www.aanda.org/10.1051/0004-6361/201117304
Image: Black hole outflow: Turbulent winds of gas swirl around a black hole. Some of the gas is spiraling inward toward the black hole, but another part is blown away (NASA/CXC/M.Weiss)
For further information on this news story contact Joyce Lewis; tel.+44(0)23 8059 5453
Scientists have secured £5 million of funding for research into nanotechnology that could result in faster computers, smarter sensors and more energy-efficient mobile phones.
Led by the University of Southampton and funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), the research team aims to develop the technique of supercritical fluid electrodeposition to make and enhance materials at the smallest scale possible.
High-tech materials underpin a wide range of photonic and electronic devices, including recording and medical equipment. Silicon, for example, is used as a semiconductor in computer chips. How materials are layered and patterned helps determine the qualities of devices such as storage, speed and power.
"The drive is always to make technological devices faster, smaller and smarter," says project leader Professor Phil Bartlett, from the University of Southampton.
"Our aim is to develop techniques that could be used to produce significantly smaller and more complex nanomaterials for data storage, sensors, energy conversion and a huge range of other applications that no-one has even dreamt of yet."
Electrodeposition, also known as electroplating, is already widely used to layer or add properties to materials to protect or thicken them or for aesthetics. The process deposits liquid into the pores of the material - but it has limits.
"Electrodeposition of materials into pores with diameters smaller than a few tens of atoms is very difficult, if not impossible, from liquids," says Phil.
"But using supercritical fluids - halfway between a fluid and a gas -means we could potentially reach pores of less than two nanometers. Supercritical fluids can completely fill a space, like gas, but have properties of a liquid that can be altered by temperature or pressure. Their extreme penetrating powers will enable electrodeposition to apply to structures far smaller than anything achieved to date."
The five-year programme brings together researchers from the universities of Southampton, Nottingham and Warwick with expertise in electrochemistry, supercritical fluid science, synthetic chemistry and materials physics.
"This is a distinctive team with complementary and unique skills and expertise," says Southampton physicist Dr David Smith.
"The programme gives us the opportunity to investigate new materials, perhaps to use as clever coatings that respond to their environment or that reduce friction, and to bring together materials that do not naturally co-exist."
Astronomers at the Universities of Southampton and Oxford have found evidence that neutron stars, which are produced when massive stars explode as supernovae, actually come in two distinct varieties. Their finding also suggests that each variety is produced by a different kind of supernova event.
Neutron stars are the last stage in the evolution of many massive stars. They represent the most extreme form of matter: the mass of a single neutron star exceeds that of the entire sun, but squeezed into a ball whose diameter is smaller than that of London.
In a paper which will be published this week in Nature, Professors Christian Knigge and Malcolm Coe from the University of Southampton worked with Philipp Podsiadlowski of Oxford University to reveal how they have discovered two distinct populations of neutron stars that appear to have formed via two different supernova channels.
"Theoreticians have speculated before about the possible existence of different types of neutron stars, but there has never been any clear observational evidence that there is really more than one type," said Professor Coe.
The astronomers analysed data on a large sample of high-mass X-ray binaries, which are double star systems in which a fast-spinning neutron star orbits a massive young companion. The neutron star in these systems also periodically siphons off material from its partner. During such phases, the neutron star becomes an X-ray pulsar: its brightness increases tremendously, but the resulting X-ray radiation is pulsed on the neutron star spin period. Such systems are very useful, because by timing their pulses, astronomers can accurately measure the neutron star spin periods.
The astronomers detected two distinct groupings in a large set of spin periods measured in this way, with one group of neutron stars typically spinning once every 10 seconds, and the other once every 5 minutes. This finding has led them to conclude that the two distinct neutron star populations formed via two different supernova channels.
"These findings take us back to the most fundamental processes of stellar evolution and lead us to question how supernovae actually work," Professor Knigge added. "This opens up numerous new research areas, both on the observational and theoretical fronts."
A physicist at the University of Southampton is using polystyrene balls of increasing size to recreate classic experiments in physics to test the limits of quantum mechanics.
Dr Hendrik Ulbricht has been awarded a Foundational Questions Institute (FQXi) grant of $140,000 to carry out experiments which could reveal where the quantum realm ends and the classical world begins. He describes the experiment in a YouTube video.
Dr Ulbricht will look at interference patterns of the balls and recreate a polystyrene test which has all the elements of Thomas Youngâs two-slit experiment, in which light from a single source is shone through a pair of slits and onto a screen, where an interference pattern of light and dark bands appear. In physics, interference is something that happens when two light waves come together. In quantum physics, even a single particle itself can interfere.
Over the years, single particle interference patterns have been created by firing electrons, atoms and even large molecules at the slits. Dr Ulbricht hopes to push the quantum-classical boundary a big step further by demonstrating interference using polystyrene balls that are a thousand times heavier than the largest molecules tested so far.
âNobody has done this with polystyrene before, but it looks very promising,â? said Dr Ulbricht. âThese experiments will help us understand the mechanism which links the quantum to the classical world in a consistent picture.â?
The Microstructured Optical Fibre group led by Professor David Richardson at the University of Southamptonâs Optoelectronics Research Centre developed the optical fibres to guide the particles through the process.
Just like the popular Muse album âBlack Holes and Revelationsâ, a research team which includes Dr Tom Maccarone and Professor Christian Knigge from the University of Southampton has found that a newly discovered type of black hole - an Intermediate Mass Black Hole â reveals clues on how galaxies are formed.
Research led by Dr Sean Farrell, at the Sydney Institute for Astronomy at the University of Sydney and published this week in the USAâs Astrophysical Journal, examines how these Intermediate Mass Black Holes form, furthering our understanding of how galaxies may form.
The first Intermediate Mass Black Hole, called HLX-1, was discovered by Dr Farrell and his research team in 2009. Focusing on HLX-1 as the prototype of this new class of black hole, the new paper details the detection of the presence of a very young massive cluster of stars around HLX-1.
âBlack holes are areas where the matter is so densely squeezed into a small space, that it makes gravity pull strongly enough to stop light from escaping,â? explained Dr Farrell.
âAstronomers have classified black holes into stellar mass black holes, which are up to tens of times the mass of our Sun, and supermassive black holes, which are millions to billions of times the mass of our Sun. HLX-1 lies in between at around 20 000 times the mass of our Sun.â?
Using NASAâs Hubble and Swift space telescopes and new modeling techniques developed for this research, the researchers have taken a closer look at their HLX-1 black hole.
Co-author of the paper, Dr Mathieu Servillat, from the Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics, said: "For a unique source we needed a unique telescope â Hubble enabled such precision in the images to allow us to understand the environment of the black hole and witness what is probably a merger in progress with its host galaxy."
Dr Tom Maccarone of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Southampton comments: âEven with the fantastic image quality of Hubble, this object still looks like a point of light. What really complicated things was that we had to sort out how much light was coming from the disk of gas falling toward the black hole, and how much light was coming from the stars in the general vicinity of the black hole. Fortunately, we had made images with Hubble in many different colours of light, and we were able to use the colours plus some models of the colours for groups of stars both to sort out how much light was coming from stars versus disk, and how many hot, blue stars versus cool, red stars we had."
Dr Farrell explained further, âOur latest finding is that weâve detected evidence for a very young massive cluster of stars around the HLX-1 black hole. The fact that itâs a very young cluster of stars indicates that our Intermediate Mass Black Hole may have originated as the central black hole in a very low mass dwarf galaxy, that has been swallowed by the massive galaxy that it now resides in.
âThis has really important implications for how supermassive black holes form, and therefore how galaxies form and evolve.
âBefore this finding, we had very strong evidence for the existence of Intermediate Mass Black Holes, but we weren't sure where they were formed. Now we may understand where they come from,â? said Dr Farrell.
âThis conclusion opens up many other opportunities for us to begin targeted observations, mainly with NASAâs Chandra space telescope, in order to find more potential Intermediate Mass Black Holes.â?
The formation of stellar mass black holes through the collapse of massive stars is well accepted, but it is not yet completely clear how the supermassive black holes are formed.
âSupermassive black holes may form through the merger of Intermediate Mass Black Holes, so studying Intermediate Mass Black Holes and the environments in which they are found has important implications for a wide range of important questions in modern astrophysics,â? said Dr Farrell.
âIntermediate Mass Black Holes are a crucial missing link between stellar mass and supermassive black holes, and may turn out to be the building blocks of the supermassive black holes found in the centres of galaxies. Our own Milky Way galaxy may be filled with them.â?
For further information on this news story contact Joyce Lewis; tel.023 8059 5453.
Powerful supercomputers have shed light on the behaviour of key sub-atomic particles, in a development that could help explain why there is almost no anti-matter in the universe.
An international collaboration of scientists, including physicists from the Universities of Edinburgh and Southampton, has reported a landmark calculation of the decay of an elementary particle called a kaon, using breakthrough techniques on some of the worldâs fastest supercomputers.
The calculation took 54 million processor hours on the IBM BlueGene/P supercomputer at the Argonne Leadership Class Facility (ALCF) at Argonne National Laboratory in the US.
The new research, reported in the March 30 issue of Physical Review Letters, represents an important milestone in understanding kaon decays - which are a fundamental process in physics. It is also inspiring the development of a new generation of supercomputers that will allow the next step in this research.
âIt has taken several decades of theoretical developments and the arrival of very powerful supercomputers to enable physicists to control the interactions of the quarks and gluons, the constituents of the elementary particles, with sufficient precision to explore the limits of the standard model and to test new theories,â? says Chris Sachrajda, Professor of Physics at the University of Southampton, one of the members of the research team publishing the new findings. âThe present calculation focuses on the fundamental question of how we arrived at a universe composed almost exclusively of matter with virtually no antimatter, but the theoretical and computational techniques of Lattice Quantum Chromodynamics (see below) will also be central to unravelling the underlying framework behind the discoveries anticipated at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN.â?
The process by which a kaon decays into two lighter particles known as pions was explored in a 1964 Nobel Prize-winning experiment. This revealed the first experimental evidence of a phenomenon known as charge-parity (CP) violation â a lack of symmetry between particles and their corresponding antiparticles that may explain why the Universe is made of matter, and not antimatter.
When kaons decay into lighter pions, the constituent sub-particles known as quarks undergo changes brought about by weak forces that operate at such a small scale. As the quarks move away, they exchange gluons â particles that cause the quarks to bind into the pions.
The computations are performed using the techniques of lattice quantum chromodyamics (QCD â the theory that describes fundamental quark-gluon interactions), in which the decay is inputted into a computer as a finite grid of space-time points. The problem of calculating the decay rate can be reduced to a statistical method, called the Monte Carlo method. The present calculation extends the range of lattice QCD calculations to a new class of process, weak decays with two strongly interacting particles in the final state.
Whilst the calculation reported here has determined fundamental quantities necessary for an understanding of the matter-antimatter asymmetry, it also marks the beginning of the next phase of the collaborationâs work. This will involve improving the precision of the computations and extending the range of physical quantities for which the effects of the strong nuclear force can be quantified.
Comparing experimental measurements of rare processes with the predictions of the standard model is a powerful tool to search for signatures of new physics and in discriminating between proposed theories. Lattice QCD will be a central tool in these studies, but in most cases even more computing power is required.
Dr Peter Boyle of the University of Edinburgh, who co-authored the paper, said: âFortunately the next generation of IBM supercomputers is being installed over the next few months in many research centres around the world, including the Blue-Gene/Q at Edinburgh, part of the DiRAC (Distributed Research utilising Advanced Computing) facility of which both the Edinburgh and Southampton groups are members, as well as at ALCF, the KEK laboratory in Japan, the Brookhaven National Lab and the Riken Brookhaven Research Center (RBRC) in the US.â?
These new IBM BlueGene/Q machines are expected to have 10 to 20 times the performance of the current machines, Dr Boyle explains: âWith this dramatic boost in computing power we can get a more accurate and complete version of the present calculation, and other important details will come within reach. This is a nice synergy between science and the computer â the science pushing computer developments and the advanced computers pushing science forward, to the benefit of the science community and also the commercial world.â?
The UKâs Software Sustainability Institute is on the lookout for a team of researchers to take part in its new Fellows programme to develop a better understanding of the way that software is used in research.
Each Fellow will be allocated £3,000 over 18 months to support activities that are beneficial to both the Fellow and the Institute such as travelling to conferences, or setting up and running workshops. The Institute has launched the prestigious new programme to recruit outstanding UK-based academics and researchers, who will help them gather intelligence about research and software from a whole range of subject areas.
The Software Sustainability Institute is a team of experts from the universities of Edinburgh, Manchester, Oxford and Southampton, who are committed to cultivating world-class research through software.
The Institute team is looking for about 15 new Fellows, from PhD students to professors, who are based in a wide range of research areas that rely on software such as science, technology, digital humanities, engineering and social sciences.
The programme follows on from a successful Agents programme run over the past year by the Institute. The pilot programme saw ten Agents recruited to keep the Institute up to date with the latest software developments in their field.
âSoftware is now a fundamental part of research. The Software Sustainability Institute was set up in 2010 to help researchers use and develop software that is reliable, well engineered and can be re-used by different disciplines in and outside their research programmes,â? said Simon Hettrick, the Instituteâs Publicity Manager, who is based in Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Southampton.
âTo achieve this we need to gather information from across as many research areas and software programmes as possible to see what is available, what works well and what could be used elsewhere.
âWe ran the Agents programme last year and had a phenomenal amount of interest from people who wanted to take part in the programme. Over the year our Agents gathered useful intelligence that we are using to inform researchers about more sustainable research software,â? added Simon.
Interested candidates can start applying for a Fellows place immediately and will find it advantageous to attend the official launch event at the Digital Research 2012 conference on 10 September in Oxford. Attending the launch event is free.
The launch event will be a great opportunity for potential applicants to find out more about the Fellows programme, network with like-minded researchers from across all disciplines, meet people from the Institute and discover the important role that better software can play in research.
As well as talks from Instituteâs Director, Neil Chue Hong, Software Architect, Steve Crouch, and Fellows Programme leader, Shoaib Sufi, some of the Agents who took part in the pilot programme will be on hand to share their experiences.
An innovative challenge in which the University of Southampton PhySoc helped schoolchildren from St Albans launch their experiments into âspaceâ, also included banishing a Minecraft Creeper as far away as possible.
Earlier this year, the University of Southampton PhySoc launched a new PhySoc Outreach Project devised and led by Physics undergraduate Chris Frohmaier, PhySoc Outreach Chair and final-year student on the MPhys with Astronomy. The idea behind the project was to help schoolchildren from St Albans launch their experiments into âspaceâ. PhySoc were keen to get the schoolchildren excited about practical science and to inspire them to study Physics at the University of Southampton.
The schoolchildren put their experiments into table-tennis balls which were then launched on a balloon with a tracker designed by Electronics student Matthew Brejza, a member of the Southampton University ASTRA Initiative. Physics student George Winstone also designed an experiment to detect cosmic particles. With the aid of Cambridge University Spaceflight Society (CUSF), the weather-balloon was launched from Churchill College, and tracked throughout the duration of its flight.
The payload also included cameras loaded with CHDK software to take pictures on the way up. âAs a group, we saw this as a brilliant time to also launch some of our own personal hobbiesâ?, said Ben Oxley of the PhySoc Outreach team, âand so a Minecraft âCreeperâ and chest were launched.â?
Although the balloon burst early, it reached a maximum altitude of 23km! It then descended and landed in a field where after some searching it was found still intact and still taking photos!
The Physoc Outreach team is run by dedicated undergraduate students from Physics and other disciplines, who are all passionate about passing on their enthusiasm for science.
Simon Wilkinson, a third year student on our MPhys Physics course has just submitted his research for review in the Journal of Quantum Electronics. Simon spent his summer between his second and third years working in Berlin at the Institute of Theoretical Physics at the Technical University of Berlin. He performed theoretical simulations of devices designed to amplify laser light passing through them. The devices are self-organised quantum dots - experimental realizations of the famous "square well" problem in Quantum Mechanics. In these devices an external voltage provides the power to place electrons in the dots in high energy levels. As a laser passes through the material it encourages the electrons to emit radiation in phase with the passing wave, amplifying it. Simon's work studied the play off between increasing the amplification and the quality of the signal produced.
Simon says, "It was a great opportunity to experience the atmosphere of a scientific research team first hand. Berlin is an amazing city too, so I had a great time, made friends and learned loads."