Multiple Sclerosis Research Doubles Number of Genes Associated With the Disease, Increasing the Number to Over 50

Dr. John Rioux, researcher at the Montreal Heart Institute, Associate Professor of Medicine at the Université de Montréal and original co-founder of the International Multiple Sclerosis Genetics Consortium is one of the scientists who have identified 29 new genetic variants linked to multiple sclerosis, providing key insights into the biology of a very debilitating neurological disease. Many of the genes implicated in the study are relevant to the immune system, shedding light onto the immunological pathways that underlie the development of multiple sclerosis.

Scientists have identified 29 new genetic variants linked to multiple sclerosis, providing key insights into the biology of a very debilitating neurological disease. Many of the genes ¬implicated in the study are relevant to the immune system, shedding light onto the immunological pathways that underlie the development of multiple sclerosis. (Credit: © Attila Németh / Fotolia)

The research, involving an international team of investigators led by the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford, and funded by the Wellcome Trust, was published August 10 in the journal Nature. This is the largest MS genetics study ever undertaken and includes contributions from almost 250 researchers as members of the International Multiple Sclerosis Genetics Consortium and the Wellcome Trust Case Control Consortium.

Multiple sclerosis is one of the most common neurological conditions among young adults, affecting around 2.5 million individuals worldwide. The disease results from damage to nerve fibres and their protective insulation, the myelin sheath, in the brain and spinal cord. The affected pathways -- responsible in health for everyday activities such as seeing, walking, feeling, thinking and controlling the bowel and bladder -- are prevented from 'firing' properly and eventually are destroyed. The new findings focus attention on the pivotal role of the immune system in causing the damage and help to explain the nature of the immune attack on the brain and spinal cord.

In this multi-population study, researchers studied the DNA from 9,772 individuals with multiple sclerosis and 17,376 unrelated healthy controls. They were able to confirm 23 previously known genetic associations and identified a further 29 new genetic variants (and an additional five that are strongly suspected) conferring susceptibility to the disease.

A large number of the genes implicated by these findings play pivotal roles in the workings of the immune system, specifically in the function of T-cells (one type of white blood cell responsible for mounting an immune response against foreign substances in the body but also involved in autoimmunity) as well as the activation of 'interleukins' (chemicals that ensure interactions between different types of immune cell). Interestingly, one third of the genes identified in this research have previously been implicated in playing a role in other autoimmune diseases (such as Crohn's Disease and Type 1 diabetes) indicating that, perhaps as expected, the same general processes occur in more than one type of autoimmune disease.

Previous research has suggested a link between Vitamin D deficiency and an increased risk of multiple sclerosis. Along with the many genes which play a direct role in the immune system, the researchers identified two involved in the metabolism of Vitamin D, providing additional insight into a possible link between genetic and environmental risk factors.

Dr. Alastair Compston from the University of Cambridge who, on behalf of the International Multiple Sclerosis Genetics Consortium, who led the study jointly with Dr. Peter Donnelly from the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics, University of Oxford, said: "Identifying the basis for genetic susceptibility to any medical condition provides reliable insights into the disease mechanisms. Our research settles a longstanding debate on what happens first in the complex sequence of events that leads to disability in multiple sclerosis. It is now clear that multiple sclerosis is primarily an immunological disease. This has important implications for future treatment strategies."

Dr. Donnelly added: "Our findings highlight the value of large genetic studies in uncovering key biological mechanisms underlying common human diseases. This would simply not have been possible without a large international network of collaborators, and the participation of many thousands of patients suffering from this debilitating disease."

Dr. John Rioux, holder of the Canada Research Chair in Genetics and Genomic Medicine, furthermore stated that "the integration of the genetic information emerging from studies of this and other chronic inflammatory diseases such as Crohn's disease, ulcerative colitis, arthritis and many others is revealing what is shared across these diseases and what is disease-specific. This is but one of the key bits of information emerging from these studies that will guide the research of disease biology for years to come and be the basis for the development of a more personalized approach to medicine."

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Genetically Modified 'Serial Killer' T-Cells Obliterate Tumors in Leukemia Patients

In a cancer treatment breakthrough 20 years in the making, researchers from the University of Pennsylvania's Abramson Cancer Center and Perelman School of Medicine have shown sustained remissions of up to a year among a small group of advanced chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) patients treated with genetically engineered versions of their own T cells. The protocol, which involves removing patients' cells and modifying them in Penn's vaccine production facility, then infusing the new cells back into the patient's body following chemotherapy, provides a tumor-attack roadmap for the treatment of other cancers including those of the lung and ovaries and myeloma and melanoma.

The protocol, which involves removing patients' cells and modifying them in Penn's vaccine production facility, then infusing the new cells back into the patient's body following chemotherapy, provides a tumor-attack roadmap for the treatment of other cancers including those of the lung and ovaries and myeloma and melanoma. (Credit: Image courtesy of University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine)

The findings, published simultaneously in the New England Journal of Medicine and Science Translational Medicine on August 10, are the first demonstration of the use of gene transfer therapy to create "serial killer" T cells aimed at cancerous tumors.

"Within three weeks, the tumors had been blown away, in a way that was much more violent than we ever expected," said senior author Carl June, MD, director of Translational Research and a professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine in the Abramson Cancer Center, who led the work. "It worked much better than we thought it would."

The results of the pilot trial of three patients are a stark contrast to existing therapies for CLL. The patients involved in the new study had few other treatment options. The only potential curative therapy would have involved a bone marrow transplant, a procedure which requires a lengthy hospitalization and carries at least a 20 percent mortality risk -- and even then offers only about a 50 percent chance of a cure, at best.

"Most of what I do is treat patients with no other options, with a very, very risky therapy with the intent to cure them," says co-principal investigator David Porter, MD, professor of Medicine and director of Blood and Marrow Transplantation. "This approach has the potential to do the same thing, but in a safer manner."

Secret Ingredients

June thinks there were several "secret ingredients" that made the difference between the lackluster results that have been seen in previous trials with modified T cells and the remarkable responses seen in the current trial. The details of the new cancer immunotherapy are detailed in Science Translational Medicine.

After removing the patients' cells, the team reprogrammed them to attack tumor cells by genetically modifying them using a lentivirus vector. The vector encodes an antibody-like protein, called a chimeric antigen receptor (CAR), which is expressed on the surface of the T cells and designed to bind to a protein called CD19.

Once the T cells start expressing the CAR, they focus all of their killing activity on cells that express CD19, which includes CLL tumor cells and normal B cells. All of the other cells in the patient that do not express CD19 are ignored by the modified T cells, which limits side effects typically experienced during standard therapies.

The team engineered a signaling molecule into the part of the CAR that resides inside the cell. When it binds to CD19, initiating the cancer-cell death, it also tells the cell to produce cytokines that trigger other T cells to multiply -- building a bigger and bigger army until all the target cells in the tumor are destroyed.

Serial Killers

"We saw at least a 1000-fold increase in the number of modified T cells in each of the patients. Drugs don't do that," June says. "In addition to an extensive capacity for self-replication, the infused T cells are serial killers. On average, each infused T cell led to the killing of thousands of tumor cells -- and overall, destroyed at least two pounds of tumor in each patient."

The importance of the T cell self-replication is illustrated in theNew England Journal of Medicine paper, which describes the response of one patient, a 64-year old man. Prior to his T cell treatment, his blood and marrow were replete with tumor cells. For the first two weeks after treatment, nothing seemed to change. Then on day 14, the patient began experiencing chills, nausea, and increasing fever, among other symptoms. Tests during that time showed an enormous increase in the number of T cells in his blood that led to a tumor lysis syndrome, which occurs when a large number of cancer cells die all at once.

By day 28, the patient had recovered from the tumor lysis syndrome -- and his blood and marrow showed no evidence of leukemia.

"This massive killing of tumor is a direct proof of principle of the concept," Porter says.

The Penn team pioneered the use of the HIV-derived vector in a clinical trial in 2003 in which they treated HIV patients with an antisense version of the virus. That trial demonstrated the safety of the lentiviral vector used in the present work.

The cell culture methods used in this trial reawaken T cells that have been suppressed by the leukemia and stimulate the generation of so-called "memory" T cells, which the team hopes will provide ongoing protection against recurrence. Although long-term viability of the treatment is unknown, the doctors have found evidence that months after infusion, the new cells had multiplied and were capable of continuing their seek-and-destroy mission against cancerous cells throughout the patients' bodies.

Moving forward, the team plans to test the same CD19 CAR construct in patients with other types of CD19-positive tumors, including non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and acute lymphocytic leukemia. They also plan to study the approach in pediatric leukemia patients who have failed standard therapy. Additionally, the team has engineered a CAR vector that binds to mesothelin, a protein expressed on the surface of mesothelioma cancer cells, as well as on ovarian and pancreatic cancer cells.

In addition to June and Porter, co-authors on the NEJM paper include Bruce Levine, Michael Kalos, and Adam Bagg, all from Penn Medicine. Michael Kalos and Bruce Levine are co-first authors on the Science Translational Medicine paper. Other co-authors include June, Porter, Sharyn Katz and Adam Bagg from Penn and Stephan Grupp the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.

The work was supported by the Alliance for Cancer Gene Therapy, a foundation started by Penn graduates, Barbara and Edward Netter, to promote gene therapy research to treat cancer, and the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.

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Engineers Reverse E. Coli Metabolism for Quick Production of Fuels, Chemicals

In a biotechnological tour de force, Rice University engineering researchers this week unveiled a new method for rapidly converting simple glucose into biofuels and petrochemical substitutes. In a paper published online in Nature, Rice's team described how it reversed one of the most efficient of all metabolic pathways -- the beta oxidation cycle -- to engineer bacteria that produce biofuel at a breakneck pace.

Just how fast are Rice's single-celled chemical factories? On a cell-per-cell basis, the bacteria produced the butanol, a biofuel that can be substituted for gasoline in most engines, about 10 times faster than any previously reported organism.

"That's really not even a fair comparison because the other organisms used an expensive, enriched feedstock, and we used the cheapest thing you can imagine, just glucose and mineral salts," said Ramon Gonzalez, associate professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at Rice and lead co-author of the Nature study.

Gonzalez's laboratory is in a race with hundreds of labs around the world to find green methods for producing chemicals like butanol that have historically come from petroleum.

"We call these 'drop-in' fuels and chemicals, because their structure and properties are very similar, sometimes identical, to petroleum-based products," he said. "That means they can be 'dropped in,' or substituted, for products that are produced today by the petrochemical industry."

Butanol is a relatively short molecule, with a backbone of just four carbon atoms. Molecules with longer carbon chains have been even more troublesome for biotech producers to make, particularly molecules with chains of 10 or more carbon atoms. Gonzalez said that's partly because researchers have focused on ramping up the natural metabolic processes that cells use to build long-chain fatty acids. Gonzalez and students Clementina Dellomonaco, James Clomburg and Elliot Miller took a completely different approach.

"Rather than going with the process nature uses to build fatty acids, we reversed the process that it uses to break them apart," Gonzalez said. "It's definitely unconventional, but it makes sense because the routes nature has selected to build fatty acids are very inefficient compared with the reversal of the route it uses to break them apart."

The beta oxidation process is one of biology's most fundamental, Gonzalez said. Species ranging from single-celled bacteria to human beings use beta oxidation to break down fatty acids and generate energy.

In the Nature study, Gonzalez's team reversed the beta oxidation cycle by selectively manipulating about a dozen genes in the bacteria Escherichia coli. They also showed that selective manipulations of particular genes could be used to produce fatty acids of particular lengths, including long-chain molecules like stearic acid and palmitic acid, which have chains of more than a dozen carbon atoms.

"This is not a one-trick pony," Gonzalez said. "We can make many kinds of specialized molecules for many different markets. We can also do this in any organism. Some producers prefer to use industrial organisms other than E. coli, like algae or yeast. That's another advantage of using reverse-beta oxidation, because the pathway is present in almost every organism."

The research was funded by Rice University.

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Narcissists Look Like Good Leaders, but They Aren't

ScienceDaily (Aug. 10, 2011) — Narcissists rise to the top. That's because other people think their qualities -- confidence, dominance, authority, and self-esteem -- make them good leaders.

Is that true? "Our research shows that the opposite seems to be true," says Barbora Nevicka, a PhD candidate in organizational psychology, describing a new study she undertook with University of Amsterdam colleagues Femke Ten Velden, Annebel De Hoogh, and Annelies Van Vianen. The study found that the narcissists' preoccupation with their own brilliance inhibits a crucial element of successful group decision-making and performance: the free and creative exchange of information and ideas. The findings will be published in an upcoming issue ofPsychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

The study recruited 150 participants and divided them into groups of three. One person was randomly assigned to be the group's leader; all were told they could contribute advice, but that the leader was responsible for making the decision. Then they undertook a group task: choosing a job candidate. Of 45 items of information about the candidate, some were given to all three, and some to only one of the participants.

The experiment was designed so that using only the information all three were privy to, the group would opt for a lesser candidate. Sharing all the information, including what each possessed exclusively, would lead to the best choice. Afterwards, the participants completed questionnaires. The leaders' questions measured narcissism; the others assessed the leaders' authority and effectiveness. All checked off the items among the 45 that they knew -- indicating how much the group had shared -- and rated how well they'd exchanged information. Experimenters tallied the number of shared items, noted the objective quality of the decision, and analyzed these data in relation to the leader's narcissism.

As expected, the group members rated the most narcissistic leaders as most effective. But they were wrong. In fact, the groups led by the greatest egotists chose the worse candidate for the job. Says Nevicka, "The narcissistic leaders had a very negative effect on their performance. They inhibited the communication because of self-centeredness and authoritarianism."

Narcissism can sometimes be useful in a leader, says Nevicka. In a crisis, for instance, people feel that a strong, dominant person will take control and do the right thing, "and that may reduce uncertainty and diminish stress."

But in the everyday life of an organization, "communication -- sharing of information, perspectives, and knowledge -- is essential to making good decisions. In brainstorming groups, project teams, government committees, each person brings something new. That's the benefit of teams. That's what creates a good outcome." Good leaders facilitate communication by asking questions and summarizing the conversation -- something narcissists are too self-involved to do.

Nevicka says the research has implications beyond the workplace -- for instance, in politics. "Narcissists are very convincing. They do tend to be picked as leaders. There's the danger: that people can be so wrong based on how others project themselves. You have to ask: Are the competencies they project valid, or are they merely in the eyes of the beholder?"

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Meteorites contain chemicals linked to life

Meteorites contain chemicals linked to life

Space rocks could have delivered DNA building blocks to Earth

By Alexandra Witze

Web edition : Wednesday, August 10th, 2011

  Text Size

ENLARGE

HINTS OF LIFEChemists have found that this meteorite, found in Antarctica and dubbed Lonewolf Nunataks 94102, contains nucleobases, the building blocks of DNA. The nucleobases probably originated in space, the scientists say.M. Callahan/NASA GSFC

Scientists have discovered life-related chemicals in nearly a dozen meteorites, the strongest evidence yet that space rocks contain the building blocks of DNA and could have delivered them to Earth.
Several of the chemicals are extremely rare on Earth, suggesting they really are from outer space instead of being just local contamination. “Everything points to these being indigenous to the meteorites,” says Michael Callahan, an analytical chemist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.
He and his colleagues published the findings online the week of August 8 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Researchers have spotted other extraterrestrial biological molecules in meteorites before, including amino acids, the building blocks of proteins. The new study looked instead at nucleobases, ring-shaped compounds used to store information in RNA and DNA molecules, which carry life’s genetic blueprints. Nucleobases are at least as important to life as amino acids, Callahan says, and, until now, no one had found nucleobases in meteorites that couldn’t potentially have been contaminants from Earth.
To tackle the question, Callahan’s team probed the chemistry of 12 meteorites, including nine that had been scooped up on the Antarctic ice sheet. Eleven contained at least one nucleobase, adenine, that is common on Earth. Others were more exotic. Two of the meteorites, known as Murchison and Lonewolf Nunataks 94102, turned out to host a wide variety of nucleobases, including three that are rare on Earth. These rare nucleobases are from a class called purines.
The researchers carefully analyzed the Antarctic ice, earthly soil and other control samples that could show whether terrestrial contamination was a problem. The team didn’t find the nucleobases anywhere but in the meteorites.
To figure out how the chemicals got there, the scientists mixed hydrogen cyanide, ammonia and water — common meteorite ingredients — in the laboratory. The resulting chemical reactions yielded the same kinds of nucleobases seen in the meteorites.
Callahan now wants to see whether he can find nucleobases in other space rocks.
The new study significantly bolsters the evidence that nucleobases can form in places other than Earth, says Alan Schwartz, a chemist at Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands. Schwartz has looked for purines before in the Murchison meteorite, and the new study reported much lower levels of those chemicals than he did — suggesting that nucleobases, where they exist, might be spread patchily through the rock.
A second paper appearing online in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences the same week looks at the biological contents of meteorites from a different angle. A team led by George Cooper of NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., discovered chemicals such as pyruvic acid and citric acid in several meteorites, including Murchison. On Earth, these chemicals are key players in the citric acid cycle, which cells need to respire and survive.
The papers both suggest that space rocks contain more of life’s ingredients than once thought.

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EDISON'S ANTI-GRAVITY UNDERWEAR AND OTHER WONDERS

While trolling through my RSS feeds last week, I came across a delightful blog post by John Ptak, who has a penchant for quirky historical oddities -- in this case, an 1879 issue of The London Punch crediting US inventor Thomas Edison with the invention of antigravity undergarments.

It's worth perusing just for the imaginative illustrations (see above), with museum goers floating aloft to view paintings hung near the ceiling, and parents tethering their levitating offspring to bicycles for an afternoon jaunt.

WATCH VIDEO: Dark energy seems to have an antigravity effect on the entire Universe.

SLIDE SHOW: Stupid Inventions of the Past

It wasn't real, of course, but at the time, Edison was just coming into his fame, and seemed like he could achieve any number of marvels previously thought impossible. He was even featured in an early science fiction novel by Garrett P. Serviss, Edison's Conquest of Mars (1898), which introduced numerous tropes of science fiction: alien abductions, spacesuits, and disintegrator rays, for example.

While that novel didn't feature antigravity underwear, HG Wells invented a fictional substance called "cavorite" for The First Men in the Moon, capable of blocking gravity. The concept is that, because cavorite shields the air above it from gravity, there is more air pressure below, shooting the lighter air outward. The material is used to build a spaceship and travel to the moon, but who says it couldn't also be used for underwear?

SEE ALSO: Henrietta Swan Leavitt Comes to Life on Stage

What about real-life antigravity schemes? Many of the young boys who devoured those early science fiction novels grew up to be fascinated by futuristic technologies. Some of them spent decades laboring over prototype inventions that never quite seemed to work. Whether they were crackpots or visionaries depends on who you ask, but here are five of the best known proponents of antigravity.

1. Roger Babson. Roger Babson was a successful businessman who went on to become the founder of Babson College. In 1948 he also founded the Gravity Research Foundation, devoted entirely to studying ways to reduce the effects of gravity -- or, at least, gaining a better understanding of this mysterious physical force.

One Foundation trustee, Agnew Bahnson, created the sister Insitute for Field Physics at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, for the study of gravitation. When Babson died in 1967, the Foundation dissolved, although there is still an annual essay contest for groundbreaking insights into gravitational phenomena. Among the past winners is astrophysicist George Smoot, who went on to win the 2006 Nobel Prize in Physics.

SLIDE SHOW: Inventors Killed By Their Own Inventions

2. Thomas Townsend Brown. In a chain of events straight out of The X-Files, in 1955, a man named Thomas Townsend Browntraveled first to England, then to France, to work on a top-secret research project called Projet Mongolfier. Brown's previous work had been in high-voltage experiments, and 30 years before, he had developed a device he called a "gravitator." He claimed it produced anti-gravity effects simply by applying high voltages to materials with high dielectric constants.

He based the concept on his earlier work investigating the Biefeld-Brown effect, also known as electrogravitics, whichWikipedia describes as "an electrical effect that produces an ionic wind that transfers its momentum to surrounding neutral particles" -- in other words, it produces a kind of electric propulsion.

Brown endured his share of ridicule for his ideas, but by the 1950s, several aerospace firms were interested in studying this effect as part of a broad gravity propulsion research program in the US that lasted from 1955 to 1974. It is still the basis for so-called ionocraft, "lifters," or, more recently, EHD (electrohydrodynamics) thrusters. Numerous patents were issued during the 1960s -- several to Brown himself.

Brown's reputation took a beating in part because he believed the Biefeld-Brown effect could explain the maneuvering of UFOs. Yes, he was a diehard ufologist, and co-founder of the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena, although he resigned almost immediately after it was established. His work with Project Mongolfier no doubt added to his aura of mystique, although it seems his research may have ultimately lost support when it failed to produce the desired results.

SEE ALSO: Was Roswell 'Flying Saucer' Mystery a Soviet Plot?

3. Henry William Wallace. In the early 1970s, several patents for antigravity-type devices were granted to Henry William Wallace, an engineer at GE Aerospace in Pennsylvania.

He figured if you could build the device out of just the right materials (say disks of brass), and then spin it rapidly, it would generate its own energy field. Wallace dubbed it a "Kinemassic Forcefield." And if you could get that force field to undulate in turn, you could "neutralize" gravity. In short, it would create an anti-gravity field.

A 1980 article in New Scientist described his invention thusly:

"In one kinemassic machine a pair of wheels of brass alloy, like gyroscopes, are mounted in close-fitting air gaps between massive structural supports formed from steel. The wheels are driven to a high speed of rotation by jets of compressed air or nitrogen. The inventor claims that, at speeds of about 20,000 rpm, polarization of the spin nuclei of the alloyed metal occurs. If one wheel is balanced on a knife edge, it will start to oscillate under the influence of the other. If the spinning wheels are rotated abut another axis, a secondary gravitational field is created which reduces the wheels’ weight. If a sufficiently strong field is created, it can generate localized areas of gravitational shielding and thus provide an effective propulsion force."

4. Eric Laithwaite. Although many dismissed Wallace as a bit of a crank, an electrical engineer at Imperial College, London, named Eric Laithwaite, independently developed his own version of an anti-gravity device along similar lines.

Laithwaite started out working with linear induction motors, then went on to help create one of the first magnetic levitation systems. James Bond fans might recall a scene in The Spy Who Loved Me that featured Laithwaite's system levitating a tray across a table with sufficient speed to decapitate a dummy. (You can see some fascinating video footage of Laithwaite talking about both the maglev work and his work on gyroscopes here.)

Then he became fascinated by gyroscopes after an amateur inventor named Alex Jones showed him a prototype "reactionless propulsion drive." Laithwaite gave a 1974 talk at the Royal Institution in which he insisted that a spinning gyroscope weighs less than a motionless one, and that this could not be accounted for by Newton's laws of motion. Ergo, reactionless propulsion should be possible. His talk was not well-received. Indeed, it is the only time the Royal Institution has declined to publish an invited lecture.

Laithwaite backed off his "Newton was wrong" stance, but still thought a reactionless propulsion system was possible based on the behavior of gyroscopes. His perseverance paid off in 1999 when the US Patent Office granted him Patent # 5860317. But a working prototype never materialized.

5. Eugene (Yevgeny) Podkletnov. One of the more recent proposals for antigravity devices was contained in a paper that appeared in the peer-reviewed journal Physica C in 1992 by Russian engineer Eugene Podkletnov.

Podkletnov claimed that rotating a chilled superconducting disk very quickly would reduce the effects of gravity -- specifically, he reported a slight reduction in weight in any object suspended above the disk. (One of the many cool properties of superconductors is that they repel magnetic fields.)

That first paper didn't attract much notice, perhaps because the observed weight reduction was so tiny (0.3%). But in 1996, a longer paper appeared in theJournal of Physics D, reporting a more significant weight reduction of 2%. Then the Sunday Telegraphgot wind and ran an article proclaiming the achievement of "the world's first antigravity device."

To say the claim was controversial would be an understatement, even though Podkletnov insisted his claim was simply a reduction in gravity's effect -- not blocking it entirely. But it was enough to intrigue NASA sufficiently to embark on its own research program for an "antigravity shield." The research was fraught with problems, and Podkletnov himself proved to be of little help, saying he was "just a ceramics physicist" who had hired others to build the actual device.

In 1997 he retracted his second paper and left his position with the Tampere University of Technology in Finland to return to Moscow. That same year, he claimed to have built a new device capable of generating a "gravity repulsion beam." He envisioned making flying machines that could reflect gravity waves and maneuver like UFOs.

While Podkletnov claimed his work was reproduced by scientists in Toronto and Sheffield, none of them came forward with the results of those purported experiments. So let's just say the physics community remains skeptical about the real-world potential for true antigravity devices. Although antigravity underwear would still be really cool.

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Quantum Computers? Physicists 'Entangle' Two Atoms Using Microwaves for the First Time

ScienceDaily (Aug. 10, 2011) — Physicists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have for the first time linked the quantum properties of two separated ions (electrically charged atoms) by manipulating them with microwaves instead of the usual laser beams, suggesting it may be possible to replace an exotic room-sized quantum computing "laser park" with miniaturized, commercial microwave technology similar to that used in smart phones.

Composite photo of microwave apparatus used in NIST quantum computing experiments. A pair of ions (electrically charged atoms) are trapped by electric fields and manipulated with microwaves inside a glass chamber at the center of the apparatus. The chamber is illuminated by a green light-emitting diode for visual effect. An ultraviolet laser beam used to cool the ions and detect their quantum state is colorized to appear blue. (Credit: Y. Colombe/NIST)

Microwaves, the carrier of wireless communications, have been used in past experiments to manipulate single ions. But the NIST group is the first to position microwaves sources close enough to the ions -- just 30 micrometers away -- and create the conditions enabling entanglement, a quantum phenomenon expected to be crucial for transporting information and correcting errors in quantum computers.

Described in the August 11 issue ofNature,* the experiments integrate wiring for microwave sources directly on a chip-sized ion trap and use a desktop-scale table of lasers, mirrors, and lenses that is only about one-tenth of the size previously required. Low-power ultraviolet lasers are still needed to cool the ions and observe experimental results but might eventually be made as small as those in portable DVD players. Compared to complex, expensive laser sources, microwave components could be expanded and upgraded more easily to build practical systems of thousands of ions for quantum computing and simulations.

"It's conceivable a modest-sized quantum computer could eventually look like a smart phone combined with a laser pointer-like device, while sophisticated machines might have an overall footprint comparable to a regular desktop PC," says NIST physicist Dietrich Leibfried, a co-author of the new paper.

"Although quantum computers are not thought of as convenience devices that everybody wants to carry around, they could use microwave electronics similar to what is used in smart phones. These components are well developed for a mass market to support innovation and reduce costs. The prospect excites us."

Quantum computers would harness the unusual rules of quantum physics to solve certain problems -- such as breaking today's most widely used data encryption codes -- that are currently intractable even with supercomputers. A nearer-term goal is to design quantum simulations of important scientific problems, to explore quantum mysteries such as high-temperature superconductivity, the disappearance of electrical resistance in certain materials when sufficiently chilled.

Ions are a leading candidate for use as quantum bits (qubits) to hold information in a quantum computer. Although other promising candidates for qubits -- notably superconducting circuits, or "artificial atoms" -- are manipulated on chips with microwaves, ion qubits are at a more advanced stage experimentally in that more ions can be controlled with better accuracy and less loss of information.

The same NIST research group previously used ions and lasers to demonstrate many basic components and processes for a quantum computer. In the latest experiments, the NIST team used microwaves to rotate the "spins" of individual magnesium ions and entangle the spins of a pair of ions. This is a "universal" set of quantum logic operations because rotations and entanglement can be combined in sequence to perform any calculation allowed by quantum mechanics, Leibfried says.

In the experiments, the two ions were held by electromagnetic fields, hovering above an ion trap chip consisting of gold electrodes electroplated onto an aluminum nitride backing. Some of the electrodes were activated to create pulses of oscillating microwave radiation around the ions. Radiation frequencies are in the 1 to 2 gigahertz range. The microwaves produce magnetic fields used to rotate the ions' spins, which can be thought of as tiny bar magnets pointing in different directions. The orientation of these tiny bar magnets is one of the quantum properties used to represent information.

Scientists entangled the ions by adapting a technique they first developed with lasers. If the microwaves' magnetic fields gradually increase across the ions in just the right way, the ions' motion can be excited depending on the spin orientations, and the spins can become entangled in the process. Scientists had to find the right combination of settings in the three electrodes that provided the optimal change in the oscillating magnetic fields across the extent of the ions' motion while minimizing other, unwanted effects. The properties of the entangled ions are linked, such that a measurement of one ion would reveal the state of the other.

The use of microwaves reduces errors introduced by instabilities in laser beam pointing and power as well as laser-induced spontaneous emissions by the ions. However, microwave operations need to be improved to enable practical quantum computations or simulations. The NIST researchers achieved entanglement 76 percent of the time, well above the minimum threshold of 50 percent defining the onset of quantum properties, but not yet competitive with the best laser-controlled operations at 99.3 percent.

In addition to improving microwave operations by reducing unwanted ion motion, the NIST team also plans to study how to suppress cross-talk between different information processing zones on the same chip. Different frequencies could be used for logic operations and control of other nearby qubits, for instance. Smaller traps could enable faster operations if unwanted heating can be suppressed, according to the paper.

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