Research Notes

by Wendy Y. Lawton

A better battery

It's thin, light, flexible – and plastic. Brown University engineers Hyun-Kon Song and Tayhas Palmore have created a prototype polymer-based battery that packs more power than a standard alkaline battery and more storage capacity than a double-layered capacitor. Their work, published in Advanced Materials, will be of interest to the energy, defense and aerospace industries, which seek more efficient ways to deliver electricity.

Mental health horizons

A new model of treatment for bipolar disorder, similar to care given to diabetics and others with chronic diseases, improved patient outcomes without adding costs, according to a randomized, controlled trial led by Mark S. Bauer, M.D., staff psychiatrist with the Providence V.A. Medical Center and professor of psychiatry and human behavior at Brown Medical School. Bauer said the trial results show that the new care model, which gets patients involved in managing their own symptoms, can reduce the stigma of helplessness associated with bipolar disorder. The findings were published in Psychiatric Services in July.

The shape of life

During development, cells organize themselves into tissues, tissues form organs, organs become organisms. Over and over, patterns emerge. Spiders get eight legs. Leopards get spots. Every nautilus is encased in an elegant spiral shell. But how? Professor James Valles Jr. and Assistant Professor Jay Tang experimented for two years and found a surprising answer: Physical, as well as chemical, forces can dictate pattern formation. The physicists' work was published in July in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Achievements in nanotechnology

Brown engineers published two nanotech milestones this summer.

In Nanotechnology, a team led by graduate student Adam Lazareck and Professor Jimmy Xu reported that they used DNA to direct construction and growth of complex nanowires, which could be used for a range of applications, from medical diagnostics to fiber optical networks. The feat was a first. "If you want to make something, turn to Mother Nature," Lazareck said.

In another first, a team led by Associate Professor Thomas Webster created surfaces for orthopedic implants that reduce the presence of bacteria. The research may lead to a new class of artificial joints. That is a big market: More than 750,000 Americans undergo knee, hip or shoulder replacement surgery each year. Results appeared in the Journal of Biomedical Materials Research.

International coverage of breakthrough research

A team led by neuroscientist John Donoghue hit the cover of Nature in July when, for the first time, they published detailed clinical trial results showing that a tiny new brain sensor allowed a quadriplegic to control devices by thought alone. In the cover article, Professor Donoghue and colleagues from Brown and Cyberkinetics Neurotechnology Systems, Inc., the spin-off company developing and testing the mind-to-movement device, detailed how one patient opened a prosthetic hand, controlled a robotic limb, and moved a computer cursor simply by thinking about it. The work offers important insights into the human brain and how to tap its power to improve the lives of people with spinal cord injury and other severe motor impairments.

Leigh Hochberg, M.D., an investigator in neuroscience at Brown and a neurologist at Massachusetts General Hospital, was lead author of the article. Other co-authors with ties to Brown include Mijail Serruya, M.D., a Brown Medical School graduate; Gerhard Friehs, M.D., neurosurgery professor; Jon Mukand, M.D., clinical assistant professor of orthopedics; and Brown graduates Maryam Saleh and Abraham Caplan.

The Nature article received sweeping media coverage throughout the world.

Altruists and swindlers

Whether you're a freeloading virus or a meat-stealing monkey, selfishness pays. So how could cooperators survive in a cheater's world? Thomas Flatt, a postdoctoral research associate in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, was part of a group that neatly solved this dilemma, which has stumped evolutionary biologists and social scientists for decades. The trick: Their theoretical model kept the altruists in small groups, away from the swindling horde, where they multiply and migrate. Their work appeared in June the Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

Microorganisms in motion

Flagella are whip-like appendages used by some single-celled organisms to move. But in certain colonies of green algae, flagella also boost nutrient uptake, according to research that appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in May. The team explained how flagella allow these algae to get the energy they need to multiply and create colonies. "This is a critical piece of information, since understanding how one-celled life forms evolve into many-celled ones is a fundamental question in biology," said study co-author Thomas Powers, associate professor of engineering.