Transparent Transistor Author(s): Alexandra Goho Source: Science News, Vol. 166, No. 22 (Nov. 27, 2004), pp.

339-340 Published by: Society for Science & the Public Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4015851 Accessed: 28/11/2009 12:57
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Umbilical Bounty
Cordblood shows value against leukemia
In two studies comparing treatments for

adults with leukemia, scientists find that a transplant of umbilical cord blood offers a viable option for people who don't have a well-matched bone marrow donor. Leukemia occurs when marrow cellsthe stem cells for blood-become cancerous. Using drugs and radiation, doctors can wipe out nearly all the malignant marrow cells, clearing the way for an infusion of donated marrow that can make new, healthy blood cells. Marrow transplants precisely matched to a patient'sblood characteristics can be remarkably successful. Only about 20 percent of leukemia patients have a sibling donor who's a good match, says hematologist Mary J. Laughlin of CaseWesternReserveUniversityin Cleveland. Ofthe otherpatients,fewerthan a third find an acceptable match, she says. Moreover, even a slightly mismatched marrow transplant is fraught with risks. That's because marrow delivers more than just nascent blood cells; it carries mature immune cells that can make trouble by attackinga recipient'stissues, causing graftversus-host disease. On the other hand, umbilical cord blood contains predominantly naive cells, which aren'tyet programmedto attackforeign tissue, sayshematologistJuliet N. Barkerofthe Universityof Minnesota in Minneapolis. That's part of the reason why, since the first cord-blood transplant took place in 1988, many scientists have eagerly awaited hard evidence of the technique's benefits. Cord-bloodtransplants in which the donor and recipientaren'trelatedor fully matched have shown success in children, who are small and resilient. But their potential in adults has been less clear, because a single umbilical cord contains only about onetenth as many blood stem cells as the typical bone marrow transplant does. In a new study from Europe, Eliane
WWW. SC IENCEN EWS. ORG

Gluckmanof Hospital St. Louis in Parisand Hideo Hosono and his colleagues at the her colleagues compared the outcomes for Tokyo Institute of Technology developed 98 leukemia patients who received cord- a transparent semiconductor material out blood transplants from donors who were of indium gallium zinc oxide. Although unrelated and nearly all mismatched and other research groups have previously for 584 similar patients who received mar- made transparent circuitry, "their perrow transplantsfrom unrelated-but-match- formance was not so good," says Hosono. ing donors. After 2 years, 36 percent of the In contrast, prototype transistors made cord-blood recipients and 42 percent ofthe from his team's new material are 10 times marrow recipients were alive and free of as conductive as the silicon transistors disease. Statistical analysis indicates that used in today's liquid-crystal displays. these survival rates aren't significantly difHosono attributes his material'ssuccess to the greater mobility of electrons when a ferent, the authors note. In a U.S. study, Laughlin, Barker, and voltage is applied. their colleaguesassessed 367 matched-marrow transplants, 150 mismatched cordblood transplants,and 83 mismatched marrow transplants. After 3 years, 35 percent of patients getting matching marrow were alive. Statistics indicate that no significant difference between the 26 percent of the mismatched cord blood recipients and the 20 percent of the mismatched marrow recipients who survived. The two studies appear in the Nov. 25 New England Journal ofMedicine. Both research groups found that cord blood, with its small number of stem cells, was slower than marrow to develop into a full complement of blood cells. That makes NOW YOU SEE IT Transparent transistors cord-blood recipients more vulnerable to on a sheet of plastic can be seen only at infection after the transplant, says Claudio certain angles. Such circuitry could find its Anasetti of the Moffitt Cancer Center in way into computer displays in car Tampa, Fla. windshields and other curved surfaces. On the otherhand, both studies show that "This is the first time I've seen a transmismatched cord-bloodtransplantsare less apt to spawn acute attacks of graft-versus- parent transistoron a plastic substratewith host disease than mismatched marrow is. such high performance," says Edzer The pros and cons of mismatched mar- Huitema of Philips Research Laboratories row and cord blood seem to balance out, in Eindhoven,the Netherlands. "Thisopens says Ted A. Gooley of the Fred Hutchinson up a range of new applications.' Cancer Research Center in Seattle. Depositing standardsilicontransistorson Laughlin says the findings open the way plastic is nearlyimpossible since the process for cord-blood treatments in some adult requires much heat. "Thatwould melt the leukemia patients. "We're says recommending, plastic," Huitema. However,the indium at this point, that if a patient doesn't have gallium zinc oxide goes onto plastic at room a matched marrow [transplant available] temperature.The researchersdescribetheir in a timely fashion, then proceed with cord new materialin the Nov. 25 Nature. blood,"she says. -N. SEPPA "Thispaper is exciting," says John Rogers of the University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign. "Thearea of flexible electronics has attracted a great deal of attention overthe last fewyears." instance, a numFor ber ofgroups in academiaand industryhave created electronic components out of organic materialsfor flexible computer displays (SN: 1/31/04, p. 67). However, none of these materials is transparent. In addition to providing a host of speImagine a car windshield that suddenly cialty applications, transparent circuitry lights up to reveal a map of the city and could make existing displays brighter by directions to your next destination. Or pic- increasing the amount of light reaching the ture a computer display that you can not viewer's eyes, adds Rogers. As in all new technologies,devisingmethonly see through but also roll into a tube and slip into your coat pocket. Scientists in ods for mass production presents a techniJapan have taken a major step to fulfilling cal hurdle.The method that the researchers such visions with the creation of a trans- used to deposit the transistors on plastic parent transistor deposited on plastic. isn't amenable to large-scale manufactur-

Transparent Transistor

See-throughcomponent for flexibledisplays

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ing, saysTobinMarksof Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill. He notes that it remains to be seen whether the researchers can find a method for making large quantities of high-quality transistors. Hosono says that his group is collaborating with an electronics company to develop the technology. Through this partnership, he plans to sort out the manufacturing issues and improve the material's long-term stability. -A. GOHO

see. What we see is shaped by what we feel, a new study suggests. When looking at faces displaying fearful expressions, people with intact brains or with brain damage that spares the amygdala, an emotion-regulating neural strucScanning program can ture, exhibit pronounced activity in certain parts ofthe brainthat deal with visual infordiscern true art mation, say neuroscientist Patrik Vuilleumier ofthe Universityof Geneva in Switzerland and his colleagues. People respond to Until now, discerning an artist's style has neutral faces with less activity in these been in the eye of the beholder. However, a visual-cortex areas. new mathematical tool distills style into an array of statistics as a potential means to Moreover, when people with amygdala spot forgeries. In a recent study, the techdamage view fearfulfaces, they show sparse nique distinguished eight drawings by the activity in these areas, the scientists report in the NovemberNature Neuroscience.Peo16th-century artist Pieter Brueghel the Elder from five imitations attributed to the ple with the most-extensive tissue loss in master until a decade or so ago. the amygdala display the least activity. Several digital-imaging researchers, Taken together, the results indicate that including the study'sauthors, agree that the the amygdala uses its connections to farwork is only a first step toward a reliable flung areas of the brain to shape the visual fraud-detection technique. However, the perception of fearful objects, according to Vuilleumier'sgroup. "Enhancedactivation preliminaryfindings are encouraging,comments David Donoho, a statistician at Stanto fearful stimuli in distant sensory regions \ ford University. depends on amygdala function,"the scienThe technique employs a process called tists conclude. wavelet decomposition to breakdown a digYet,in a separatetrial,people with amygital image into a collection of more-basic dala damage recognized the emotion images, called subbands. Just as a musical depicted in faces displaying any of six tone consists of a low fundamental freexpressions, including fear. Vuilleumier and his coworkers studied quencywith higher-frequencyovertones,an image's low-frequency subbands show the 26 people who had brain-damaging broad strokes,while higher-frequency subepilepsy. Over many years, the disease had bands depict details. Wavelets have been left half of them with varying degrees of used in a wide range of image-processing MANY HANDS A statistical analysis of amygdaladamage; in the rest, neurallosses applications,such as layeringdetail onto the Perugino's "Virginand Child with Saints" (top) had spared the amygdala. The team also animated creatures in the filmA Bug'sLife. suggests that at least four artists contributed studied 13 participantswith healthy brains. Wavelet decomposition is good at ana- to the work. Only areas 1, 2, and 3 cluster in a The scientists used a functional magnetic representation of six areas (bottom). resonanceimaging (fMRI) scannerto measlyzing textures. For instance, a smooth, untroubled surface such as a blue sky ure blood flowthroughout the brains of parWhile the results are interesting, a study ticipants as they viewed a sequence of would show up mostly in the low-frequency subbands, while blades of grass of only two artists isn't enough to make the images on a computer screen. Each image would produce activity primarily in art world adopt the method, says Nadine containeda pairof facesand a pairofhouses, higher-frequency subbands. Orenstein, a curator at the Metropolitan with one pairalignedverticallyand the other Now, in an upcoming Proceedings of the Museum of Art in New York."Ithink they horizontally. Both faces in a pair showed NationalAcademy ofSciences, researchers need to study a much larger sample of either a fearful or a neutral expression. report capturing the texture of an artist's material,"she says. Participants were told to pay attention strokes. "Ithink the broad idea is the right one," only to vertically aligned pairs on half the "Amaster might have smooth, consis- says Jitendra Malik of the University of trials and only to horizontally aligned pairs tent strokes, say,while an imitator isjerky," California,Berkeley.However, he adds, it's on the rest.

says study coauthor Hany Farid, a computer scientist at Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H. In the new study, the researchers measured 72 statistical features, such as the percentage of dark portions in a given subband. The team found that the genuine Brueghels all had similar statistics, while the imitations were significantly different from the Brueghels and from each other. The researchersalso studied the painting "Virginand Child with Saints,"created in the studio ofthe Italian artist Pietro Perugino around the turn of the 16th century. They conclude that it was probablypainted by at least four artists, in keeping with historians'opinion that Perugino painted only a portion of the work.

not clear whether the 72 features the team examined are the most effectiveones. "Testing the approach on many more artists will probablyenable us to get a handle on what are the best features for art authentication," he says. -E. KLARREICH

Feel Neural for Seeing

Emotion may mold early visual activityin brain
We don't just react emotionally to what we

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