The Need for Early Engagement with Interested Groups on Advanced Biopreservation.

Research on advanced biopreservation - technologies that include, for example, partial freezing, supercooling, and vitrification with nanoparticle infusion and laser rewarming - is proceeding at a rapid pace, potentially affecting many areas of medicine and the life sciences, food, agriculture, and environmental conservation. Given the breadth and depth of its medical, scientific, and corresponding social impacts, advanced biopreservation is poised to emerge as a disruptive technology with real benefits, but also ethical challenges and risks. Early engagement with potentially affected groups can help navigate possible societal barriers to adoption of this new technology and help ensure that emerging capabilities align with the needs, desires, and expectations of a broad range of interested parties.

Building Governance & Coordination Across Applications.

Advanced biopreservation technologies using subzero approaches such as supercooling, partial freezing, and vitrification with reanimating techniques including nanoparticle infusion and laser rewarming are rapidly emerging as technologies with potential to radically disrupt biomedicine, research, aquaculture, and conservation. These technologies could pause biological time and facilitate large-scale banking of biomedical products including organs, tissues, and cell therapies.

Successfully Bridging Innovation and Application: Exploring the Utility of a Risk Innovation Approach in the NSF Engineering Research Center for Advanced Biopreservation Technologies (ATP-Bio).

This exploratory study set out to pilot use of a Risk Innovation approach to support the development of advanced biopreservation technologies, and the societally beneficial development of advanced technologies more broadly. This is the first study to apply the Risk Innovation approach - which has previously been used to help individual organizations clarify areas of value and threats - to multiple entities involved in developing an emerging technology.

Governing new technologies that stop biological time: Preparing for prolonged biopreservation of human organs in transplantation.

Time limits on organ viability from retrieval to implantation shape the US system for human organ transplantation. Preclinical research has demonstrated that emerging biopreservation technologies can prolong organ viability, perhaps indefinitely. These technologies could transform transplantation into a scheduled procedure without geographic or time constraints, permitting organ assessment and potential preconditioning of the recipients.

A genotyping array for the globally invasive vector mosquito, Aedes albopictus.

Background: Although whole-genome sequencing (WGS) is the preferred genotyping method for most genomic analyses, limitations are often experienced when studying genomes characterized by a high percentage of repetitive elements, high linkage, and recombination deserts. The Asian tiger mosquito (Aedes albopictus), for example, has a genome comprising up to 72% repetitive elements, and therefore we set out to develop a single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) chip to be more cost-effective. Aedes albopictus is an invasive species originating from Southeast Asia that has recently spread around the world and is a vector for many human diseases.

Wolbachia wAlbB inhibit dengue and Zika infection in the mosquito Aedes aegypti with an Australian background.

Biological control of mosquito vectors using the endosymbiotic bacteria Wolbachia is an emerging strategy for the management of human arboviral diseases. We recently described the development of a strain of Aedes aegypti infected with the Wolbachia strain wAlbB (referred to as the wAlbB2-F4 strain) through simple backcrossing of wild type Australian mosquitoes with a wAlbB infected Ae. aegypti strain from the USA.

Survey of industrial perceptions for the use of nanomaterials for in-home drinking water purification devices.

As businesses, specifically technology developers and industrial suppliers, strive to meet growing demand for higher quality drinking water, the use of engineered nanomaterials in commercial point-of-use (POU) in-home water purification devices are becoming an increasingly important option. Anecdotally, some businesses appear wary of developing and marketing nanomaterial-enabled devices because of concerns that they will face onerous regulation and consumer pushback. However, little of substance is known about business perceptions of and attitudes toward the use of engineered nanomaterials in POU water purification devices, or how these compare with consumer perceptions.

Releasing incompatible males drives strong suppression across populations of wild and -carrying in Australia.

Releasing sterile or incompatible male insects is a proven method of population management in agricultural systems with the potential to revolutionize mosquito control. Through a collaborative venture with the "Debug" Verily Life Sciences team, we assessed the incompatible insect technique (IIT) with the mosquito vector in northern Australia in a replicated treatment control field trial. Backcrossing a US strain of carrying AlbB from with a local strain, we generated a AlbB2-F4 strain incompatible with both the wild-type (no ) and Mel- now extant in North Queensland.

The Ethical and Responsible Development and Application of Advanced Brain Machine Interfaces.

Advanced brain machine interfaces provide potentially transformative approaches to treating neurological conditions and enhancing the performance of users. Yet, as technological capabilities continue to progress in leaps and bounds, there is a possibility that these capabilities outstrip our collective understanding of how to ensure brain machine interfaces are developed and used ethically and responsibly. In this case, there is an overt danger of rapid technological developments leading to unanticipated harm through a lack of foresight including threats to privacy, autonomy, self-identity, and other areas of personal and social value which, while hard to quantify, represent substantial risks.

Small molecule inhibition of RAS/MAPK signaling ameliorates developmental pathologies of Kabuki Syndrome.

Kabuki Syndrome (KS) is a rare disorder characterized by distinctive facial features, short stature, skeletal abnormalities, and neurodevelopmental deficits. Previously, we showed that loss of function of RAP1A, a RAF1 regulator, can activate the RAS/MAPK pathway and cause KS, an observation recapitulated in other genetic models of the disorder. These data suggested that suppression of this signaling cascade might be of therapeutic benefit for some features of KS.

Mitigating Risks to Pregnant Teens from Zika Virus.

Zika infection in pregnant women is associated with an elevated probability of giving birth to a child with microcephaly and multiple other disabilities. Public health messaging on Zika prevention has predominantly targeted women who know they are pregnant or intend to become pregnant, but not teenage females for whom unintended pregnancy is more likely. Vulnerabilities among this population to reproductive risks associated with Zika are further amplified by restrictive abortion laws in several Zika-impacted states.

Angioedema: Perioperative management.

Objective: To describe the perioperative management of a patient with acquired angioedema (AAE).

Methods: A 66-year-old Caucasian male presented from an outside hospital with a history of acquired angioedema and gastrointestinal stromal tumor-related intractable urticaria and mastocytosis. He was admitted for urgent laparoscopic partial gastrectomy, secondary to gastric outlet obstruction symptomatology.

Tiger on the prowl: Invasion history and spatio-temporal genetic structure of the Asian tiger mosquito Aedes albopictus (Skuse 1894) in the Indo-Pacific.

Background: Within the last century, increases in human movement and globalization of trade have facilitated the establishment of several highly invasive mosquito species in new geographic locations with concurrent major environmental, economic and health consequences. The Asian tiger mosquito, Aedes albopictus, is an extremely invasive and aggressive daytime-biting mosquito that is a major public health threat throughout its expanding range.

Methodology/principal Findings: We used 13 nuclear microsatellite loci (on 911 individuals) and mitochondrial COI sequences to gain a better understanding of the historical and contemporary movements of Ae.

Protein Corona-Induced Modification of Silver Nanoparticle Aggregation in Simulated Gastric Fluid.

Due to their widespread incorporation into a range of biomedical and consumer products, the ingestion of silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) is of considerable concern to human health. However, the extent to which AgNPs will be modified within the gastric compartment of the gastrointestinal tract is still poorly understood. Studies have yet to fully evaluate the extent of physicochemical changes to AgNPs in the presence of biological macromolecules, such as pepsin, the most abundant protein in the stomach, or the influence of AgNPs on protein structure and activity.

Family Functioning Predicts Body Mass Index and Biochemical Levels of Youths with Nonalcoholic Fatty Liver Disease.

Unlabelled: : Family functioning is associated with obesity-related chronic illnesses and impedes effective treatment of weight-related conditions, such as nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD).

Objectives: Evaluate the utility of a brief screening measure of family functioning among youth aged 8 to 18 years being treated in a specialty care clinic for NAFLD.

Methods: Thirty-nine youths and their caregivers participated.

Exposure to Power-Frequency Magnetic Fields and the Risk of Infertility and Adverse Pregnancy Outcomes: Update on the Human Evidence and Recommendations for Future Study Designs.

Infertility and adverse pregnancy outcomes are significant public health concerns with global prevalence. Over the past 35 years, research has addressed whether exposure to power-frequency magnetic fields is one of the etiologic factors attributed to these conditions. However, no apparent authoritative reviews on this topic have been published in the peer-reviewed literature for nearly 15 years.

PERSONAL MEASURES OF POWER-FREQUENCY MAGNETIC FIELD EXPOSURE AMONG MEN FROM AN INFERTILITY CLINIC: DISTRIBUTION, TEMPORAL VARIABILITY AND CORRELATION WITH THEIR FEMALE PARTNERS' EXPOSURE.

Power-frequency magnetic field exposure science as it relates to men and couples have not been explored despite the advantage of this information in the design and interpretation of reproductive health epidemiology studies. This analysis examined the distribution and temporal variability of exposures in men, and the correlation of exposures within couples using data from a longitudinal study of 25 men and their female partners recruited from an infertility clinic. The average and 90th percentile demonstrated fair to good reproducibility, whereas the maximum showed poor reproducibility over repeated sampling days, each separated by a median of 4.