UC Science Today

The ability to use computational models for engineering applications has advanced so much in just the last decade. Mechanical engineer Lee Glascoe of the Computational Engineering Division at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory used advanced 3-D modeling to ensure that soil filter design standards for dams dating back over 50 years are still valid in the event of an earthquake.

"The advances in numerical techniques and the advances in high-performance computing allow us to address problems that we just simply could not address 10 years ago, let alone twenty years ago. I remember when I first started at the laboratories, I actually started at Los Alamos before coming to Lawrence Livermore, and I was just amazed that we were able to model anything in three dimensions! Everybody’s doing that now, but that next breakthrough in high-performance computing really can make the different in addressing things down to the grain scale. So, it’s really transformed the community."

Could reversing aging be the key to preventing age-related diseases like Alzheimer’s? In a University of California, San Francisco study, scientists found that old mice showed significant improvement in learning and memory after receiving blood from younger mice. Study leader Saul Villeda says that although human application is still far off, the idea of reversing aging could be a game changer.

"We’re keeping you healthier for a longer period of your life. I think that is huge because it’ll have a huge impact on things like healthcare, and even the way that we really think about just disease—not targeting it, but merely reversing aging to prevent it from happening."

Villeda explains that the changes that occur naturally with aging are what allow the brain to become susceptible to age-related diseases.

"So the idea is that the young environment, the young brain, has a natural way of counteracting these effects. Even if you have predispositions for some of these diseases, you don’t have the hallmarks of these diseases. So a 20-year-old is fine, even if you will develop Alzheimer’s later in life."

Could reversing aging be the key to preventing age-related diseases like Alzheimer’s? In a University of California, San Francisco study, scientists found that old mice showed significant improvement in learning and memory after receiving blood from younger mice. Study leader Saul Villeda says that although human application is still far off, the idea of reversing aging could be a game changer.

"We’re keeping you healthier for a longer period of your life. I think that is huge because it’ll have a huge impact on things like healthcare, and even the way that we really think about just disease—not targeting it, but merely reversing aging to prevent it from happening."

Villeda explains that the changes that occur naturally with aging are what allow the brain to become susceptible to age-related diseases.

"So the idea is that the young environment, the young brain, has a natural way of counteracting these effects. Even if you have predispositions for some of these diseases, you don’t have the hallmarks of these diseases. So a 20-year-old is fine, even if you will develop Alzheimer’s later in life."

As computers get faster and faster, researchers are looking to use tiny lasers to send data and fit them onto a computer chip. Janelle Shane of the University of California, San Diego’s Electrical and Computer Engineering department, describes just how tiny these lasers need to be.

"We want to make lasers that are about 100 times thinner than the diameter of a single human hair, so these lasers need to be microscopic to fit in well, size-wise, among all the other microscopic components on a chip."

One of the issues working on this in the lab is that these particles are basically a hundred times smaller than your typical dust particle.

"In every breath of air that we take, there is about a million particles of dust. And so if you can imagine you are trying to build something that is that small where there’s all these giant things floating around in the room. And so if one of these blimps lands on your chemistry experiment, your experiment is ruined."

Thankfully, Shane and her colleagues work in a clean room that filters out most of the dust.

"So, that is a huge improvement!"

As computers get faster and faster, researchers are looking to use tiny lasers to send data and fit them onto a computer chip. Janelle Shane of the University of California, San Diego’s Electrical and Computer Engineering department, describes just how tiny these lasers need to be.

"We want to make lasers that are about 100 times thinner than the diameter of a single human hair, so these lasers need to be microscopic to fit in well, size-wise, among all the other microscopic components on a chip."

One of the issues working on this in the lab is that these particles are basically a hundred times smaller than your typical dust particle.

"In every breath of air that we take, there is about a million particles of dust. And so if you can imagine you are trying to build something that is that small where there’s all these giant things floating around in the room. And so if one of these blimps lands on your chemistry experiment, your experiment is ruined."

Thankfully, Shane and her colleagues work in a clean room that filters out most of the dust.

"So, that is a huge improvement!"

Highly anxious people are more likely to make bad decisions when feeling uncertain. Those were the findings of an international study that may lead to better treatment for anxiety disorders. Study leader Sonia Bishop of the University of California, Berkeley explains that those prone to high anxiety have trouble picking up environmental cues.

"Basically when you look at how people learn, they are able to adjust how rapidly they change their behavior according to whether the context is currently stable or is volatile and highly changing. And it’s trying to parse out the reasons for why things happen which we don’t expect, which seems to be the issue which anxious individuals are having."

Bishop says their findings can help the anxious better navigate around unpredictability.

"Our understanding of these kinds of issues could give a good framework for explaining why it might be worth not just jumping to conclusions based on one bad interaction."

Highly anxious people are more likely to make bad decisions when feeling uncertain. Those were the findings of an international study that may lead to better treatment for anxiety disorders. Study leader Sonia Bishop of the University of California, Berkeley explains that those prone to high anxiety have trouble picking up environmental cues.

"Basically when you look at how people learn, they are able to adjust how rapidly they change their behavior according to whether the context is currently stable or is volatile and highly changing. And it’s trying to parse out the reasons for why things happen which we don’t expect, which seems to be the issue which anxious individuals are having."

Bishop says their findings can help the anxious better navigate around unpredictability.

"Our understanding of these kinds of issues could give a good framework for explaining why it might be worth not just jumping to conclusions based on one bad interaction."

Pressure ulcers, or bedsores, affect about 2.5 million Americans every year at an annual cost of $11 billion. Now, engineers at the University of California, Berkeley have teamed up with colleagues at the University of California, San Francisco to develop a smart bandage that can detect early tissue damage. Electrical engineer Michel Maharbiz says each bandage is fabricated with tiny electrodes on a thin, flexible film.

"What all these little electrodes do is they’re running lots of little bits of current through, between themselves. And so when you take all that information you can build a map of the state of the bed sore underneath where the bandage is."

Maharbiz says this flexible electronic technology can be easily carried around by a nurse to spot-check target areas on a patient – or even used for wound dressing.

"So you can imagine a future, which is very close, where the bandage that you put on or the dressing that a surgeon or a physician might put on would actually be able to report a lot of interesting information about the progress of that wound."

Pressure ulcers, or bedsores, affect about 2.5 million Americans every year at an annual cost of $11 billion. Now, engineers at the University of California, Berkeley have teamed up with colleagues at the University of California, San Francisco to develop a smart bandage that can detect early tissue damage. Electrical engineer Michel Maharbiz says each bandage is fabricated with tiny electrodes on a thin, flexible film.

"What all these little electrodes do is they’re running lots of little bits of current through, between themselves. And so when you take all that information you can build a map of the state of the bed sore underneath where the bandage is."

Maharbiz says this flexible electronic technology can be easily carried around by a nurse to spot-check target areas on a patient – or even used for wound dressing.

"So you can imagine a future, which is very close, where the bandage that you put on or the dressing that a surgeon or a physician might put on would actually be able to report a lot of interesting information about the progress of that wound."

The body receives most of its essential substances through the circulation of blood. That’s what got University of California, San Francisco researchers curious about testing the rejuvenating capabilities of young blood in old animals. Study leader Saul Villeda compares the role of blood to a highway.

"If you really think about blood, it has different exits to different tissues, but it connects every tissue in your body. So how are tissues going to communicate? How is the liver going to tell, maybe the muscle, or how is the brain going to communicate, then, with the liver? It's going to be through the highway, and that highway is blood. We're taking sort of the communication that's occurring in a young animal and then putting it into the communication that's occurring into the old animal."

Villeda says that the old mice that received young blood showed improved cognitive performance such as responding quicker to environmental stimuli.

"By introducing these players from the young blood, all of a sudden, we're changing the entire sort of systemic environment, and that's causing an effect on multiple organs within the body."