Bacteria-repelling catheters, and element 113

Bacteria-repelling catheters

Bacteria and other debris can become stuck to catheters inserted into the body, potentially causing infection and blood clots, also known as thrombis, to develop.  Now a group of researchers across several American Universities and Semprus Biosciences, have developed a technology that could solve this problem.  The team developed a catheter that creates a water barrier on its surface, which prevents blood platelets and bacteria sticking to the device. Co-author Chris Loose explained the importance of the technology.

Chris -   This work is important because there's a whole host of medical devices that have complications in body, whether they're related to bacteria or related to blood clotting.  So we see this as a really broad problem and this is really a first step we're showing technology has a nice long lasting performance benefits for reducing both this bacteria as well as thrombis over multiple months of blood product exposure, so a dual functionality and a long term. In laboratory trials, the new device had 99% less unwanted material attached to it than conventional catheters, even when left in place for 60 days. The work was published in Science Translational Medicine.

Element 113 found

The previously highly elusive element 113 has been discovered by Japanese scientists at the Riken laboratory, after 9 years of work.

The highly unstable and short-lived element was made by firing millions of atoms of a lighter element at a heavier one and observing the decay chains of the atoms created from the collision.

However, it's not certain that the Japanese team, publishing in the Journal of the Physical Society of Japan, will be able to claim the discovery, as other groups in Russia and the US have also made claims to element 113, and any new discovery must be ratified by a working group of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry, Iupac, as Dr. Phillip Broadwith from the Royal Society of Chemistry, explained:

Phillip -   There are other groups which may also have claims towards element 113, so it depends whose evidence the working group decides is the most convincing and which came first, as to who gets to name the element.