Teardrop Protein Shown to Have Jaws

ScienceDaily — A disease-fighting protein in our teardrops has been tethered to a tiny transistor, enabling UC Irvine scientists to discover exactly how it destroys dangerous bacteria. The research could prove critical to long-term work aimed at diagnosing cancers and other illnesses in their very early stages.

Ever since Nobel laureate Alexander Fleming found that human tears contain antiseptic proteins called lysozymes about a century ago, scientists have tried to solve the mystery of how they could relentlessly wipe out far larger bacteria. It turns out that lysozymes have jaws that latch on and chomp through rows of cell walls like someone hungrily devouring an ear of corn, according to findings that will be published Jan. 20 in the journal Science.

"Those jaws chew apart the walls of the bacteria that are trying to get into your eyes and infect them," said molecular biologist and chemistry professor Gregory Weiss, who co-led the project with associate professor of physics & astronomy Philip Collins.

The researchers decoded the protein's behavior by building one of the world's smallest transistors -- 25 times smaller than similar circuitry in laptop computers or smartphones. Individual lysozymes were glued to the live wire, and their eating activities were monitored.

"Our circuits are molecule-sized microphones," Collins said. "It's just like a stethoscope listening to your heart, except we're listening to a single molecule of protein."

It took years for the UCI scientists to assemble the transistor and attach single-molecule teardrop proteins. The scientists hope the same novel technology can be used to detect cancerous molecules. It could take a decade to figure out but would be well worth it, said Weiss, who lost his father to lung cancer.

"If we can detect single molecules associated with cancer, then that means we'd be able to detect it very, very early," Weiss said. "That would be very exciting, because we know that if we treat cancer early, it will be much more successful, patients will be cured much faster, and costs will be much less."

The project was sponsored by the National Cancer Institute and the National Science Foundation. Co-authors of the Science paper are Yongki Choi, Issa Moody, Patrick Sims, Steven Hunt, Brad Corso and Israel Perez.

Early Talking Doll Recording Discovered

ScienceDaily (July 17, 2011) — On May 11, 2011, scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, California recovered sound from an artifact that historians believe is the earliest surviving talking doll record. The artifact is a ring-shaped cylinder phonograph record made of solid metal, preserved by the National Park Service at Thomas Edison National Historical Park. Phonograph inventor Thomas Edison made the record during the fall or winter of 1888 in West Orange, New Jersey.

 
On the recording, an unidentified woman recites one verse of the nursery rhyme "Twinkle, twinkle, little star." The voice captured on the 123-year-old record had been unheard since Edison's lifetime. The recording represents a significant milestone in the early history of recorded sound technology.

Recovering and Identifying the Sound
The metal record is significantly bent out of its original round, cylindrical shape. For this reason, curators at Thomas Edison National Historical Park were unable to play the recording using conventional methods. At the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Senior Scientist Carl Haber and Computer Systems Engineer Earl Cornell used a three-dimensional optical scanning technology developed during 2007-2009, in collaboration with the Library of Congress, to create a digital model of the surface of the record. With this digital model, they used modern image analysis methods to reproduce the audio stored on the record, saving it as a WAV-format digital audio file. They were able to recover all but the first syllable of the first word of the recording. Once the recording could be heard, historian Patrick Feaster of Indiana University played a key role in identifying and dating the recording by finding relevant references among archival documents. Researcher René Rondeau of Corte Madera, California provided additional fact-checking assistance.

Talking Doll Records Made of Tin
In search of a market for his invention the phonograph, Edison first attempted to make talking dolls during 1888. The prototype model described in laboratory notes and newspaper articles between September and December of that year was distinctive for using a record made of solid tin. In November 1888, the New York Evening Sun announced that Edison's talking dolls had just been "perfected," and that "nothing remains but to manufacture them in large quantities." No commercially viable method of duplicating sound recordings had yet been developed, so Edison hired women with suitable voices to make as many records as he thought would be needed once his talking dolls were put on the market: "There were two young ladies in the room...who were continually talking to the tiny speaking machines, which a skilled workman was turning out in great numbers."

Significance of the Recording
According to Feaster, this New York Evening Sun report marks the first time anyone is known to have been employed specifically to perform for the phonograph, so these women were arguably the world's first professional recording artists. If the goal was to stockpile these tin records "in large quantities" to supply the eventual demand for talking dolls, as the New York Evening Sun suggests, then they may also have been the first phonograph recordings ever manufactured for sale to the public, even though they were never actually sold.

It was more than a year later, in April 1890, when Edison placed a talking doll on the market. By that time, however, he had switched the design to use records made of wax rather than tin. The dolls failed to sell because they broke too easily -- due in part to the fragility of the records. It is unclear why Edison switched from tin to wax records for the talking doll.

Provenance of the Artifact
National Park Service museum curators first cataloged the object in 1967, found among items left in the desk of Edison's secretary William H. Meadowcroft, located in the library of the Edison Laboratory in West Orange, New Jersey. A paper tag found tied to the cylinder reads: "Tin Phonograph Cylinder […]l Record." The artifact is the only example of a talking doll record from 1888 known to survive today.

Update: I've been asked if I could upload the audio, so here it is.