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It sounds a bit like science fiction: a disposable, personal computer chip attached to your body-maybe even floating through your bloodstream-keeping constant tabs on your blood pressure, heart rate and other vital signs.

But this is where health technology is headed, say a growing number of scientists excited over what the field of nanotechnology holds for the future of medicine.

A new center at the Florida A&M/FSU College of Engineering is dedicated exclusively to exploiting the field's potentially limitless application in health care. The Center for Nanomag-netics and Biotechnology begins its first full year of operation this fall.

“Nano” is a prefix that describes a technology that involves building things on a scale that's commonly 1,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair. In medicine, nano-sized machines can now manipulate individual cells and the protein within them.

“The devices we're developing are potentially simpler, smaller, less expensive and faster than conventional technologies,” said Ching-Jen Chen, the center's director and dean of the engineering college.

Last spring, the center received an $850,000 Cornerstone Grant from the university's Research Foundation to get started, and the hunt is now on to find private industrial partners.

A major project under way at the center is pursuing development of a magnetic nano-computer chip that can determine whether someone has suffered a heart attack, a condition not always immediately apparent. Other projects involve a chip to detect viruses and the use of tiny magnetic fields to stimulate the growth of yeast, which could be a boon to the food and beverage industries.

Nanotechnology is driving a growing business worldwide. According to Lux Capital, a venture capital firm, global investment in the sector totaled more than $3 billion in 2002. The U.S. government projects investment in the technology will be worth $1 trillion by 2012.

Super New Record

In August, researchers at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory's headquarters at FSU announced that they had set a new world record in the power of a special kind of magnet built with superconducting materials.

The device achieved a strength of 25 Tesla (a measurement of magnetic field strength), breaking a 20-Tesla barrier that had stood for more than 15 years. (A single Tesla is 20,000 times the strength of Earth's magnetic field; a small refrigerator magnet is typically one Tesla or less.)

The breakthrough comes at a time when research aimed at exploiting superconducting technology is at an all-time high. Certain types of material, when cooled to extremely low temperatures, can “superconduct” electricity, which means that unlike ordinary copper wire, for example, electricity can flow through them without any loss. Though not completely understood by scientists, the phenomenon poses enormous potential for revolutionizing almost any use of power, inviting advances ranging from super-efficient power grids to vastly more powerful computers.

The innovation at the FSU facility hinges on a new type of superconducting wire, manufactured by Oxford Superconducting Technology of Carteret, New Jersey, that is used in a unique coil design engineered by a team of NHMFL researchers directed by Justin Schwartz, a materials scientist. This superconducting coil was inserted into the heart of a magnet that set the new strength record Aug. 23.

Schwartz called the achievement “a critical and essential technological breakthrough for high-temperature superconducting materials (for use in) state-of-the-art magnets.”

The new record is a culmination of a decade of collaboration between Schwartz's team and the New Jersey company, which is among the world's leading developers and marketers of superconducting wire and instruments. Most of the applications of big superconducting magnets so far these days are in scientific research, namely for use as the driving force behind an extremely powerful analytical tool known as nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy. Outside basic research, NMR is the key technology underlying MRI machines commonly used in diagnostic medicine.

The more powerful a superconducting magnet is, the greater its power for analyzing any material-including living tissue. At present, the highest known MRI fields used in medicine typically are around 3 Tesla, although an 11.7 T machine installed at the University of Florida's Brain Institute in 2001 is billed as the most powerful research MRI in the world for imaging living biological tissue.

Corn-Fed Science

What the olive is to the Mediterranean, corn is to the Americas. Like the ancient Greeks who harvested the olive tree for food, oil, fuel and firewood, Americans have found a variety of uses for corn. We pop it, grind it, cook it as a fresh vegetable, feed it to livestock and use it for beer and fuel (ethanol).

The U.S. already produces more than 9 billion bushels of corn a year, but an FSU professor wants to help grow more. In August, Hank Bass, an assistant professor of biological science, was awarded a four-year $1.5 million grant from the National Science Foundation's Plant Genome Research Program to devise a genetic approach for doing just that in the most efficient manner possible. Bass' lab has pioneered new technologies for microscopic detection of genes. The techniques will be used to draw a blueprint of the entire corn gene package (genome). The grant is thought to be the largest single award ever made for such work.

Bass' goal is to pinpoint the location of 500 genes that span the whole set of 10 chromosomes that collectively make up the corn genome. Armed with such a directory, scientists will be able to more efficiently isolate and clone genes that are most important to production.

“You can cross the country without a road map but it is easier if you have one,” said Bass. A key part of the research will focus on developing a technique to essentially make corn genes fluoresce under a microscope, he said. “We're going to be able to see by direct inspection exactly where the genes are.”

Corn is a $20 billion industry, according to the National Corn Growers Association. Each year, about 19 percent of the crop is made into 2.7 billion gallons of ethanol. Corn growers tout the grain as a renewable, cleaner-burning fuel and support federal legislation to increase ethanol production to 5 billion gallons annually.

New Bit O' Nature

Last July, physicists around the world hailed the discovery of a new kind of matter-new to science at least. The newly discovered subatomic particle may in fact have been one of the first bits of matter that nature ever produced.

By analyzing data from near light-speed collisions between deuterium atoms and gamma-rays, physicists at Jefferson National Laboratory in May confirmed findings made in 2002 by a group of physicists in Osaka, Japan. The Japanese scientists are credited with producing the first telltale evidence of a type of matter predicted to exist 30 years ago but never found.

The new type of matter has been dubbed a “pentaquark”-an exotic state of matter never before seen. In reality, the particle itself isn't a quark at all, but a tightly wound cluster of four quarks and an anti-quark-essentially five species of quarks, hence the name.

A group of FSU nuclear physicists, part of an international team working on the hunt at Jefferson Lab, provided key evidence for the discovery. Led by physicists Larry Dennis, Paul Eugenio and Alexander Ostro-vidov, the FSU contingent provided data analysis and computational expertise for the successful $20 million experiment.

Since their 1968 discovery, quarks have intrigued physicists with their many curious properties. Quarks were identified as the main building blocks of neutrons and protons-the two parts of atoms that make up about 99 percent of the visible universe. Physicists have now identified hundreds of quark-based particles inside neutrons and protons, and all found up until now were made of either three-quark clusters (particles called baryons) or two-quark configurations (mesons).

Although theory has long suggested that other types of “quark packages” existed, until the Japanese published their findings last year there had never been much in the way of solid evidence that such a novel class of subatomic particles existed.

It's still far too soon to know what, if any, practical use the pentaquark may have, but physicists are excited by the prospects of what the discovery may pose for refining their extremely limited understanding of how quarks interact with each other to form everything in the cosmos.

FSU's Eugenio says plans already are under way at FSU to hunt for what may lurk inside the pentaquark. “We should be able to observe this decaying into other particles,” he said. “We're eager to find out in greater detail exactly what makes this object up.”

R_X for the Aged

In July, FSU's med school created the first geriatrics medical department in a state where adequate care for the elderly has become an increasing public health issue in recent years.

One of the nation's more popular retirement destinations, Florida averages only 3.4 certified geriatricians for every 10,000 residents over the age of 75. The Journal of the American Geriatrics Society reports that 43 other states have a better ratio than that.

“Many physicians spend the majority of time with older patients, and while most medical schools require students to do a pediatric rotations there is no required geriatric rotation,” said Dr. Ken Brummel-Smith, chair of the new department.

The new department curriculum will cover pain management, elder abuse, dementia, how to handle falls and incontinence. Brummel-Smith says a combination of “high-tech and high-touch” learning methods will enable students to achieve a clinical competency in elderly care.

The school is using an interactive web site to link its three regional campuses to the main campus in Tallahassee. Students will be able to post clinical questions to the site and discuss interesting cases with faculty and other students.

Although older people make up about 13 percent of the U.S. population, the nation's medical schools have not given much attention to training students in how to care for the elderly, said Brummel-Smith. According to the Merck Institute of Aging and Health, only 14 of 145 medical schools include geriatrics in required courses, and only 3 percent of medical students choose geriatrics electives at the 86 med schools where they're offered.

Caseworker Casualties

It may well be a case of physician, heal thyself. A recent FSU study suggests that social workers are more vulnerable to substance abuse than the general population.

More than a third of social workers are at either moderate or serious risk of drug/alcohol abuse, says Darcy Siebert, a social work professor who did the study for The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. The results were published in the May 2003 issue of the journal Health & Social Work.

Siebert says her survey of 751 social workers in North Carolina shows a need for the profession to develop comprehensive assistance programs for caseworkers wrestling with substance-abuse problems. The study found that 28 percent of the study's participants reported binge drinking during the preceding year and 21 percent used drugs illegally since becoming a social worker.

Surveys of other help-giving professionals found that 16 percent of nurses reported binge drinking and 17 percent of doctors conceded that they believed they were drinking too much. A survey of the general population reported that 5.6 percent of respondents said they were heavy drinkers.

Siebert became interested in analyzing the affects of occupational-related stress on the personal life of social workers while working as a clinical director of an employee assistance program.

Her study is part of a series of papers focusing on the personal distress of social workers. So far, her research has revealed that social workers suffer depression at a rate three times higher than the general population.

“They work with the most vulnerable people in society and their clients have the least amount of resources,” said Siebert. “This is the inherent stress of social work. Social workers are humans and need support in dealing with stress-related problems, including alcohol and drug abuse.”

Siebert suggests that because social workers see themselves as caregivers they are more reluctant to seek help.

“Clients think their social worker has all the answers,” said Siebert. “But it is stressful work with no good solutions to the problems they are trying to solve and results in behaviors that may hinder their performance.”

This summer, the first class of students from Florida State's new College of Medicine began their final two years of training by joining practicing physicians in Tallahassee and two other Florida cities.

In July, the med school opened regional campuses in Orlando, Pensacola and Tallahassee. In the third and fourth year of studies, FSU medical students work one-on-one with physicians in clinical specialties ranging from emergency medicine to geriatrics.

Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer, who as a state senator pushed for the med school's creation in 2000, was among the officials on hand to welcome 14 members of the school's inaugural class to Orlando.

“It was clear then, and is certainly clear now, that access to health care is a problem for many Floridians, in particular the elderly, the poor and residents of rural communities,” said Dyer, who was joined by officials from the Orange County Medical Society at the campus dedication.

“It's an exciting day for the city of Orlando to have the Florida State medical school working in conjunction with our medical community.”

Rather than training primarily in a university-owned teaching hospital, as at traditional medical schools, FSU medical students get further instruction in practicing medicine by working directly with doctors in their offices, in community hospitals and a variety of outpatient settings.

In addition to Tallahassee and Orlando, 11 medical students have moved to the Pensacola campus and are working with doctors in Northwest Florida communities.

The Florida Legislature created the FSU College of Medicine in 2000 and directed the school to put a specific emphasis on training physicians to serve the needs of rural, minority and elderly populations. The college is a community-based medical school with regional campuses also planned for Ft. Myers, Jacksonville and Sarasota. The first class of 30 students at the FSU College of Medicine is scheduled to graduate in 2005.

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