Nanoscale Droplets With Cancer-Fighting Implications Produced By Scientists

�UCLA scientists have succeeded in fashioning unique nanoscale droplets that are much smaller than a human cell and can potentially be used to deliver pharmaceuticals.



"What we found that was unexpected was within each oil droplet there was also a water droplet - a double photographic emulsion," said Timothy Deming, professor and chair of the UCLA Department of Bioengineering and a member of both the California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI) at UCLA and UCLA's Jonsson Cancer Center. "We have a water droplet inside of an rock oil droplet, in water."



"The big challenge," Deming added, "was to make these double-emulsion droplets in the sub-100-nanometer sizing range with these properties and take them be stable. We have demonstrated we can make these emulsions that are stable in this size scope, which no one has ever been able to do before. These threefold nanoemulsions ar generally heavy to form and identical unstable, only ours ar very stable."



Emulsions are droplets of one liquid in some other liquid; the two liquids do non mix.



"This gives us a novel tool, a new material, for drug delivery and anticancer applications," said Thomas G. Mason, a UCLA associate professor of chemical science and physical science who has been preeminent research on nanoemulsions since he linked UCLA basketball team years ago. Mason, wHO holds UCLA's John McTague Career Development Chair, is also a member of the CNSI.



Deming and Mason have made nanoemulsions containing billions of twofold nanodroplets. Their research, coverage on droplets smaller than 100 nanometers - the world's smallest double emulsions - appears in the Sept. 4 edition of the journal Nature and is currently online.



"If we have water-soluble drugs, we can load them inside," Deming said. "If we have water-insoluble drugs, we buns load them inside as well. We can deliver them simultaneously."



"Here, you effectively combine both types of do drugs molecules in the same delivery package," Mason aforesaid. "This approaching could be used for a combination therapy where you want to deport two drugs simultaneously at a fixed ratio into the same location."



It might be possible to insert a pharmaceutical inside a droplet and come in the droplet inside a cell, the scientists aforementioned. Could these droplets release their shipment inside a cell?



"We're working on it," aforesaid Deming, wHO designs and engineers molecules. "There's a pretty clear path on how to do that. There ar still challenges for dose delivery, only we have demonstrated the key number one step, that we crapper make these double emulsions that are stable in this size range."



The cargo could be a protein toxin that helps to kill the mobile phone. For example, one approach might involve an antitumour drug in the rock oil and a toxin-protein in the water - deuce molecules trying to kill the jail cell simultaneously. While a mobile phone can develop resistance to a single drug, the combination approach can be more effective, the scientists said.



Deming and Mason caution that while this approach holds promise for fighting cancer, there ar still many steps, and likely many years of research, in front patients could be treated in this way. Clinical trials using this enquiry would plausibly be long time off.



"We'll have to do a lot of fine-tuning, simply this approach has a lot of advantages," Deming said. "The size of these is a bad advantage. We have discovered unique molecular features that can stabilise double emulsions. These ar promising, only it's early on, and there are many slipway these can fail. But we should at least learn how to make better drug-delivery vehicles."



In future inquiry, Deming and Mason require to seduce sure the droplets prat harmlessly enter cells and release their cargo.



The nanodroplets could potentially be used in cosmetics, soaps and shampoos as well.



NanoPacific Holdings Inc. has licensed this nanodroplet engineering science from UCLA to educate and commercialize the technology in a variety of applications.



Deming's laboratory is trying to take some of the key features that make proteins exceptional and put them into synthetic materials.



"Tim has these beautiful molecules that he tail design and customize," Mason said.



Deming saw Mason give a UCLA talk about unsubdivided nanoemulsions in which Mason was application nanoscale oil droplets in water victimisation natural proteins; the 2 agreed to try to combine the advantages of their materials, and their collaboration was born. Both scientists said working in concert has been "fantastic."



Emulsions are a way of taking an oil, which doesn't ruffle with water, and putt it in a water-friendly environment, where, dispersed as droplets, it behaves like a fluid. Emulsions have complex properties and are found in many products, including foods, plastics, cosmetics, oil and paints.



"In the emerging field of nanoemulsions, this research is a expectant step," Mason said.



As a graduate student at Princeton University in the early nineties, Mason founded a field called thermal microrheology that is now used by scientists planetary. Microrheology is a method for examining the viscousness and snap of soft materials, including liquids and emulsions, on a microscopic scale.



Co-authors on the Nature paper are steer author Jarrod A. Hanson, a UCLA graduate pupil in Deming's laboratory; Connie B. Chang and Sara M. Graves, both graduate students in Mason's testing ground; and Zhibo Li, a postdoctoral scholar in Deming's laboratory. Deming received a grant from the external Human Frontiers of Science program (hypertext transfer protocol://www.hfsp.org/) to support Hanson's research.



For more information about Mason's research, visit http://www.chem.ucla.edu/dept/Faculty/Mason. For more entropy about Deming's research, visit http://deming.seas.ucla.edu/.



The California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI) is an integrated enquiry center in operation jointly at UCLA and UC Santa Barbara whose mission is to foster interdisciplinary collaborations for discoveries in nanosystems and nanotechnology; train the next generation of scientists, educators and technology leadership; and facilitate partnerships with industry, refueling economic maturation and the social well-being of California, the United States and the world. The CNSI was established in 2000 with $100 million from the state of California and an additional $250 million in federal research grants and industry funding. At the institute, scientists in the areas of biology, chemical science, biochemistry, natural philosophy, mathematics, computational science and engineering are measuring, modifying and manipulating the edifice blocks of our domain - atoms and molecules. These scientists benefit from an integrated laboratory civilization enabling them to convey dynamic research at the nanoscale, leading to significant breakthroughs in the areas of health, energy, the environment and information engineering science. For extra information, visit http://www.cnsi.ucla.edu/.



The UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science, established in 1945, offers 28 academic and professional degree programs, including an interdepartmental graduate level program in biomedical technology. Ranked among the pinnacle 10 technology schools at public universities nationwide, the school is home to seven multimillion-dollar interdisciplinary enquiry centers, in space exploration, wireless sensing element systems, nanotechnology, nanomanufacturing and nanoelectronics, all funded by federal and private agencies. For more information, visit http://www.engineer.ucla.edu/.



UCLA is California's largest university, with an enrollment of nearly 37,000 undergrad and graduate students. The UCLA College of Letters and Science and the university's 11 professional schools feature renowned faculty and offer more than ccc degree programs and major league. UCLA is a national and ational leader in the breadth and quality of its academic, research, health care,

Da Brat Headed for Da Slammer

Da Brat has just been disposed one helluva spanking.

An Atlanta judge today sentenced the Unrestricted rapper to 3 years in prison for bashing a woman with a rummy bottle at a Halloween party final year.

DeKalb County Superior Court Judge Gail Flake too slapped the 34-year-old knocker, whose real name is Shawntae Harris, with seven years' probation and cc hours of community military service for the Oct. 31 incident, which occurred at mentor Jermaine Dupri's Studio 72 night club in Tucker, Ga., a suburb of Atlanta.

The hip-hopster and the victim, a waitress at the nightclub, apparently had an existing beef which boiled o'er. Police were called in after Da Brat was accused of slashing the employee's face with the glass bottle, sending her to the hospital.

Da Brat pleaded guilty to felony aggravated assault in the hopes of winning a light sentence or avoiding jail time altogether.

But the judge wasn't in a forgiving climate, noting that the victim suffered permanent facial scars.

The rapper and a half dozen family members all stony-broke down later on hearing the sentence.

"I love y'all," she said to her relatives as a deputy hauled her away, per the Atlanta-Journal Constitution.

"We love you too," came the family reply.

Aside from the rum punch, Da Brat's strike sheet includes a pistol-whipping incident that earned her a year's probation and lots of community service, as well as pay a $1,000 fine.

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Rihanna Gives Katy Perry the Kiss-Off

This calendar week Rihanna's a bad miss gone good.

Her new single "Disturbia" hardly gave the singer a third No. 1 hit from Good Girl Gone Bad and ended Katy Perry's seven-week chart-topping stripe for "I Kissed a Girl."

Perry was the first female artist to hold the top spot for seven straight weeks since, ironically, Rihanna did it last summer with "Umbrella."

Rihanna's latest single made the two-spot jump to No. 1 subsequently selling a week-best 148,000 digital downloads. Impressively, her previous chart-topper "Take a Bow" remains atop the Hot 100 Airplay chart, making this one of the rare times in which an creative person simultaneously dominates the regular Hot hundred and the Hot hundred Airplay chart with different songs.

Good Girl Gone Bad originally scored just unitary chart-topper with "Umbrella," just Rihanna released a Reloaded version lowest June that contained the new hits "Take a Bow" and "Disturbia." As happens with bonus tracks on deluxe editions, fans often buy the individual tracks alternatively of the new version and this helps drive an artist's digital track sales.

Overall, Rihanna has scored four No. 1 hits, originally with "SOS" in 2006. This ties her with Beyonc� and Mariah Carey for the decade's most chart-toppers by a female artist.

Perry's "I Kissed a Girl" ultimately fell two floater to No. 3, with Chris Brown's "Forever" guardianship at lock at No. 2. M.I.A.'s "Paper Planes" claimed the No. 5 spot, a career c. H. Best, thanks to an 11-spot jump. The song took flight thanks to digital sales following its use in the Pineapple Express trailer.

Yet once more, the Jonas Brothers had the week's biggest bow. Their title track exclusive "A Little Bit Longer" sold 131,000 downloads last week to enter the Hot 100 at No. 11 and the Digital Tracks chart at No. 2 behind Rihanna.

Equally impressive, the Brothers proceed to rewrite the record books. A few weeks back, they became the first group to land three Hot Digital Songs debuts on more than six-figure gross sales each. "A Little Bit Longer" and last week's "Tonight" (131,000 copies) have since extended that record to five songs.

Helping to make this the summer of Jonas, their new album A Little Bit Longer, released on Tuesday, is a surefire lock for No. 1 on next week's Billboard 200.

Overall, Perry wasn't the only artist to understand a chart-topping streak cut short. Keyshia Cole exhausted the last nine weeks atop the R&B/Hip-Hop chart with "Heaven Sent" ahead Lil Wayne's "A Milli" dethroned it this calendar week. Likewise, Disturbed's "Inside the Fire" was on a historic 14-week run at Mainstream Rock that Shinedown shut dispirited with "Devour."

The Hot Country Songs chart continues to be comparatively fluid, however, with Taylor Swift landing her second No. 1 with "Should've Said No." The young country darling River previous topped the area charts with "Our Song."

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Cat Stevens accepts damages over sexist libel

Yusuf Islam - the singer formally known as Cat Stevens - today recognised
substantial unrevealed libel indemnification over a claim that he was a male chauvinist
bigot wHO refused to speak to any women not wearing a veil.

The Muslim singer-songwriter's solicitor, Adam Tudor, told Mr Justice Eady at
London's High Court that the allegations, which appeared in March last year,
were entirely delusive .

"Mr Islam has never had whatsoever difficulties working with women, whether for
religious or any other reasons.

"In his normal life, women feature among some of the most influential people
in Mr Islam's squad."

Mr Tudor said that the article was distributed by the agency World
Entertainment News Network (WENN) to subscribers, including the website
Contactmusic.com, which boats 2.2 million page views a month.

It suggested that Mr Islam was so sexist and bigoted that he refused at an
awards ceremony to speak to - or fifty-fifty acknowledge - any women who were not
wearing a humeral veil.

It also suggested that his manager had stated: "Mr Islam doesn't talk with
women except his wife. Least of all if they don't endure a headscarf. Things
like that only happen via an intercessor."

Mr Tudor said this statement was simply never made.

"Unsurprisingly, the article caused Mr Islam considerable embarrassment and
distress, peculiarly given that it had the burden not only of creating an
utterly false effect of his attitude to women, merely because it cast
serious aspersions, quite a wrongly, on his religious faith, which is a matter
of the extreme importance to him."

He said that WENN and Contactmusic.com Ltd had already published apologies and
had agreed to pay solid damages - which were to be donated to the
charity Small Kindness - and Mr Islam's legal costs.

Mr Islam was not in royal court.

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Knightley Unfazed By Mother's Sex Scene

Actress Keira Knightley was happy to film a sex scene for new movie The Edge Of Love - even though the naked romp was written by her mother. The movie's screenplay was penned by Knightley's mum, Sharman Macdonald, who also served as a producer on the project. Knightley insists that knowing her mother is capable of writing about steamy clinches didn't faze her and she was happy to strip off wherever necessary. She says, "She dared to put a sex scene in it. It didn't worry me that my mother knows what sex is. "Come to think of it, I was found under an apple tree. My mother is a virgin. I had no hissy fits when she presented me with the scene."


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David Beckham Strips Down For Armani Shoot

David Beckham has once again stripped down for the latest campaign for Emporio Armani, leaving little to the imagination while working out on Malibu beach. The Celebrity Truth has the pictures!
Shot by renowned fashion photographers Mert Alas and Marcus Piggot, the latest Beckham campaign will feature on billboards and in press ads around the world promoting the latest range of Armani underwear.
The new collection will hit stores in the U.S. in August and Europe in July.


Photos courtesy of Armani. Taken by Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott.

Kutcher to play serial womaniser

Ashton Kutcher is to play a serial womaniser in a new sex comedy called 'Spread'.
Variety reports that the film also stars Jennifer Jason Leigh as a thwarted lover.
Kutcher's company Katalyst is producing the new film, which will be directed by 'Hallam Foe', 'Asylum' and 'Young Adam' director David MacKenzie.
Shooting on 'Spread' begins in Los Angeles later this month.