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Anglo-Catalan relations: a united front on nanotech

Britain and Catalonia may not agree about everything, especially when it comes to football, but one area in which they demonstrate a united front is nanotechnology. The UK is one of the three leading countries in the world for health-related nanotechnology, while in Catalonia, nanobiomedicine has become a particular research strength, with Barcelona the second city in the world with more scientific publications on the subject after Boston.

Advanced Summer School in full flow

18 young researchers from all over Europe have been learning new skills yesterday and today in the lab sessions part of the second “Interrogations at the Biointerface” Advanced Summer School, hosted by IBEC.

Cells mind the gap: cell protrusions close gaps in epithelia

Epithelial tissues line cavities and the surfaces of structures throughout the body, and also form many glands. During development, injury and in various disease conditions, gaps appear in the epidermis, which have to be quickly filled in.

The timely closure of the gaps that occur in these cell layers has been studied in great detail, and two possible mechanisms have been suggested; the closure of cells like the strings of a purse over a gap, and the extension of cellular protrusions by the cells surrounding the gap, which will eventually seal it. Different molecular players have been found to be key components of these mechanisms.

“Separ y Ciber-BBN apuestan por la innovación” (Eng)

Last week Biomedical signal processing and interpretation group leader Raimon Jané was an invited speaker at a special institutional joint session of the CIBER-BBN (Centro de Investigación Biomédica en Red en Bioingeniería, Biomateriales y Nanomedicina) and SEPAR (Sociedad Española de Neumología y Cirugía Torácica) at SEPAR’s 45th National Meeting in Madrid.

How the nose knows

The mammalian sense of smell is an excellent chemical sensing system that far outshines any man-made reproduction, so researchers have long been trying to analyze and recreate the animal olfactory system to develop artificial ‘noses’.

Now researchers at IBEC have shed new light on this highly efficient system that could allow better chemical sensing systems with important applications in such critical areas as health, security or the food industry.

New generation robots – inspired by plants

Last week saw the start of the three-year European project PLANTOID, of which IBEC’s Nanobioengineering group is a partner, which aims to design and develop robots inspired by plants.

Coordinated by the Center for Micro-BioRobotics (CMBR) of the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, the project “Innovative Robotic Artefacts Inspired by Plant Roots for Soil Monitoring (PLANTOID)”, which is funded within the European Commission’s prestigious Future and Emerging Technologies Open (FET-Open) scheme, aims to create robots called Plantoids which, combining a new generation of hardware and software technologies, will be able to imitate the behaviour of plant roots.